51–60 of 415 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As they acknowledge, this factor is extremely difficult to isolate from demographics, geography, religion, etc.
But it is not difficult to isolate from common sense. No one should profit from denying someone healthcare. All systems have ration care but it is immoral for someone to profit by denying care. Profit motive does not make for a good healthcare system.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As they acknowledge, this factor is extremely difficult to isolate from demographics, geography, religion, etc.
But it is not difficult to isolate from common sense. No one should profit from denying someone healthcare. All systems have ration care but it is immoral for someone to profit by denying care. Profit motive does not make for a good healthcare system.
To me it seems like PE has simply discovered a loophole in the system. We want a system where creating value for people is rewarded, but PE has found a way to legally get the rewards without improving society. Normally this is called a scam or a fraud, and there are laws for standard stuff like taking people's money without giving them what you promised. For PE however, they've found a way around it, using the machin…
Who is to say that a business should be liquid? Why? What is the value in making it easy to bail on your responsibilities, and why should we encourage people to quickly build a complicated and powerful system and make it easy for them to recuse themselves of that duty?
This is the kind of economic distortion that should be expected when onerous government-imposed regulation of practitioners, medication, and medical devices creates barriers to entry that reduce competition. While such regulation may have been imposed to try to increase safety, quality, and consistency, for example, it also ends up interfering with the incentives of the participants. The lack of real competition, com…
While such deregulation may have been imposed to increase competition, it also interferes with the incentives of the participants.
The lack of real oversight, combined with the introduction of unnecessary profit margins and shareholder returns, encourage and enable the participants to act in ways that are harmful to patients.
The truly unfortunate part is that deregulation often takes options and choices away from patients, as an unregulated market’s tendency toward monopoly prevents them from accessing alternatives that may help mitigate or avoid the perverse incentives introduced by quarterly performance targets.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The veterinarian world is doomed. Increasingly PE is taking over entire neighborhoods when it come to vet hospitals. This is led to increased wait times, lower standards of care, higher cost to consumers and higher pet mortality rates. That can very well translate to human healthcare.
But the barriers to starting a new vet are pretty low. If existing vets are inadequate, new ones can start.
>private equity firms own more than half of all specialists in certain U.S. markets "own" specialists? Did the US went all the way back to slavery?
I’m the furthest thing from having any knowledge here, but it feels like it should kind of be like how law firms can only have lawyers be owners with the idea that owners need to be aligned with codes of professional conduct/ethical obligations to clients etc
That model works well for professional services (eg. lawyers, accountants, consultants) because require very little capital. Everything from the office they work in, to the computers they type on can be leased. The same can't be said for hospitals, which cost hundreds of millions to build and equip. How are you going to raise all that capital from only the doctors? They're rich, but not that rich. Moreover, the payba…
ZocDoc needs a filter "not owned by private equity" Presumably the effect is -> PE forces doctors to spend less time/thought per patient -> patients receive worse care -> patients change providers Whoever can provide value to patients to forces "market efficiency" and helps patients and the system as a whole.
Nah the grift is that insurers are price-takers in a local area (if you want to provide insurance to businesses in Seattle, you need to cover e.g. cardiology in Seattle), so PE buys up all the cardiology practices in Seattle and charges more.
To me it seems like PE has simply discovered a loophole in the system. We want a system where creating value for people is rewarded, but PE has found a way to legally get the rewards without improving society. Normally this is called a scam or a fraud, and there are laws for standard stuff like taking people's money without giving them what you promised. For PE however, they've found a way around it, using the machin…
Medical malpractice premiums are very high, insurance payouts are stingier, and medicine has become more capital intensive than ever as newer medicines and diagnostics increasingly dominate, along with an aging population that needs more intensive care.
Doctors report being more burnt out than ever. It's an attractive proposition to outsource the hard and messy stuff to a firm that knows the business angle well so that they can keep their sanity and focus on what got them interested in medicine in the first place while still getting a great salary.
I don't love the situation, but let's not pretend it happened in a vacuum.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But it is not difficult to isolate from common sense. No one should profit from denying someone healthcare. All systems have ration care but it is immoral for someone to profit by denying care. Profit motive does not make for a good healthcare system.
Nobody should profit from healthcare at all. I don't care if doctors and nurses and board members and janitors all make fuck you money, or if hospitals reinvest tons of money to perpetually have state of the art facilities. But the profit dynamic is too much.