They should be a well funded public service that don't make a profit in the first place.
God forbid we don’t monetize the existence and care of life itself.
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Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes
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Re: Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like universities?
At least with universities there is a semblance of a free market/competition/choice. I.e. you can compare universities etc. While with healthcare, nobody goes checking for yelp reviews of ambulance companies when they break their leg.
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Re: Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes
#93They should be a well funded public service that don't make a profit in the first place.
Random things like cancer and genetic diseases happen, but an awful lot of disease is caused by personal choice. Drinking, smoking, unhealthy lifestyle, etc. Personal behaviors are the cause of a huge portion of our healthcare costs. I feel the same way about the recent auto insurance increases being caused by the shopping behaviors of others. Expensive EVs get completely totaled in accidents, and now everyone has to…
I promise you, the productivity gains we’ve already gained in your lifetime outweigh any possible impact people might have by eating unhealthily. You can always argue “yeah but we could be bigger and more dominant!!” but at what point does that hit diminishing returns, life-philosophy wise?
Re: Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s really amusing when tech people who have a full understanding of singletons and basic statistics always refer to themselves when making a broader statement about society. I always wonder why people seemingly can’t apply their experiences beyond themselves when they already do that day to day at work. A lot of “personal decisions” are consequences of society. Depending on where you are in society, you’re going to…
> I always wonder why people seemingly can’t apply their experiences beyond themselves I grew up lower middle class, and I didn't have it easy. I have no idea who my birth parents were. I had an abusive father. I was bullied and beaten relentlessly by the other children that didn't like on-the-spectrum kids. I didn't party like those that abused me, I withdrew into myself and turned that into hard work. So when I see…
Where's your proof the partying is causing it? Cleaning the house can be far more dangerous if you want to ask my un-sourced opinion.
EDIT The person I replied to edited their post. I'm replying to the argument:
>>> I always wonder why people seemingly can’t apply their experiences beyond themselves
>An analogy: I wonder why my lack of partying has to pay for the partying of others.
Re: Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes
#95so should religions that make profits pay taxes, something tells me neither will happen
It’s not practical to implement this because of the first amendment.
> Congress shall make no law __respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof__; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
I'm not sure if I quite understand your point. I suppose profiting off of religion could be potentially considered a form of support, I believe that if anything, a tax exemption is a more meaningful form thereof.
Granted, that does not change the fact of the matter, no such law could be instituted today because institutions/entities/people profiting from it are too big to fail. Remember what Scientology did to the IRS?
Re: Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
> well funded public service There is. The US spends more per capita on socialized medicine than any of the countries that actually have socialized medicine.[0] [0] https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm A P.S. for the "but the wait times!" crowd, look at the first chart then check out hospital beds, again per capita[1] [1] https://data.oecd.org/healtheqt/hospital-beds.htm
What does hospital beds have to do with wait times? Perhaps you have data on that?
We are middle of the pack or worse on doctors[0]. We are near the bottom when it comes to how many times we get to visit the doctors we do have[1]. I can't find a high score on anything besides "Potential years of life lost"[2], sad for us that isn't a good thing.
[0]https://data.oecd.org/healthres/doctors.htm
[1]https://data.oecd.org/healthcare/doctors-consultations.htm
[2]https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/potential-years-of-life-los...
Re: Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes
#971. I go into hospital and come out with 90k bill - I have insurance and I pay my copay of $130. 2. Insurance says "nah, we'll give you 18k" 3. Hospital goes "ok". 4. Hospital writes off as a 72k loss, which essentialy is a "tax deduction". This is good for me, but such a perverse incentive for the hospital.
99% sure that's now how accounting works. A loss is when expenses are more than revenue, not when you earn less than you wanted to. Roofing and construction contractors would be all over this if they could avoid taxes simply by negotiating down an invoice.
If I interpret TFA coorectly, the 72k difference would probably be counted as "charity care". Which is different than a loss, but still tax deductible.
In the grand scheme of things, this causes multi-level market "malfunctions". First, hospitals are incentivized to bloat bills, making healthcare virtually unaffordable if you don't have the bargaining power of an insurance company. Worse, this ties employees to their employer who subsidizes their healthcare plan (for another tax deduction I presume), thus twisting the dynamics of the labour market in favour of the employers.
Re: Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes
#98That would create an incentive to accept less patients, or to reject some patients at the end of the year just to fix the tax totals.
Re: Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not really what happens. Hospitals and payers negotiate rates and contract at that rate before the service is provided. Assuming the service is not denied by the payer, the hospital knows that they'll only be reimbursed 18k from your insurance company (or at least has the data to know in advance, putting aside whether any one person could tell you what it will be). The 90k only served as a starting point for…
> usually obscenely high due to other regulatory and contractual reasons related to the negotiation process Lets be real its due to greed nothing else.
There are plenty of industries in which purely being greedy is much easier than it is in healthcare. Greed alone does not explain the depth of complexity involved in the US healthcare pricing system.
To be clear, I’m not defending the system either. It’s fundamentally broken by design. But it’s certainly not solely the greed of hospitals that got us here.
Re: Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes
#100They should be a well funded public service that don't make a profit in the first place.
God forbid we don’t monetize the existence and care of life itself.
We should not. It should be provided unconditionally to anyone needing it. Homo sapiens can do better than letting its pairs who can't pay die (slowly).
And care givers should be very well paid because they have hard jobs and critically important ones.
Making illness profitable creates bad incentives.