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Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes

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Re: Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes

#121

Post by FireBeyond »

sega_sai wrote: post #81
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #23

Earlier 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.

> While with healthcare, nobody goes checking for yelp reviews of ambulance companies when they break their leg.

In most progressive states, ambulance rates have to be set and approved by the Department of Health, at least. While not free market, as you suggest, this is also done for consumer protection (though I'll grant that many will argue that more could be done).

Re: Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes

#123

Post by FireBeyond »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #78
willcipriano wrote: post #64

Earlier 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?

Paramedic here. You don't -stay- in the ER. You're either treated and discharged, or stabilized and moved (to surgery, to ICU, admitted). The more beds available, the shorter the ER stay, the less wait time due to throughput.

Re: Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes

#124

Post by jraph »

user_7832 wrote: post #111
jraph wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It should be provided unconditionally to anyone needing it. Correct me if I'm wrong but in many/most countries including the US, hospitals legally will treat emergency patients regardless of whether they can pay or are homeless-levels of broke.

It's not only emergencies. I've heard people in the US hesitate to get cured because they don't have the money.

Re: Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes

#125

Post by olliej »

aaa_aaa wrote: post #31
jraph wrote: post #19

They should be a well funded public service that don't make a profit in the first place.

Why? To give terrible service and managed by bureaucrats? Or being a leech of the state medical system?

Do you have data to back up the claim that private healthcare out performs public? I don't mean "if I have millions of dollars I can get treated for whatever I want, whenever I want", I mean "if you are an average person, with an average income, and average insurance what is the time to a necessary procedure, and how much will it cost you".

You can always find articles with people complaining about service in countries with actual PHS, but in my experience the same thing applies to US hospitals, with the added fun that your insurance may simply not cover anything so there's no waitlist by virtue of no treatment options, and then even if it does cover it you can still have a huge copay.

Re: Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes

#126

Post by paradox242 »

ec109685 wrote: post #42

Isn’t the distinction that non-profit hospitals have to plow surplus’s revenue back into the hospital versus distributing profit to investors / owners? If so, the tax exempt status seems aligned with how for profit businesses are taxed?

A guy a worked with once did some time as an IT contractor at one of the large hospitals here in town (they are almost all now owned by the same organization) and he was telling me how this works in practice. Since they have to spend all of them the money on "improvements" it ends up on things like the wall-sized $40k television his team of 5 put in a room in a conference room in a basement that no one ever uses.

Re: Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes

#127

Post by curun1r »

ysofunny wrote: post #2

so should religions that make profits pay taxes, something tells me neither will happen

Along with private university endowments.

The endowments of the Ivy League schools are nearing a combined $200b and schools like Stanford and MIT not far behind. These “schools” have become investment funds with a side hustle educating students to maintain their tax status and solicit alumni donations. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t be taxed, especially with many of them charging upwards of $50k/yr in tuition, much of which gets paid with grants and loans guaranteed by the government.

Re: Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes

#128

Post by FireBeyond »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #79
ysofunny wrote: post #2

so 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.

It has nothing to do with the first amendment. The government isn't restricting what churches say, it's just saying that they get an active benefit by not talking about political topics (which is widely ignored). They're free to talk about taxes all they like, but that just means they get treated like the rest of us.

Re: Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes

#129

Post by pessimizer »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #104

How do you get around tricks like "Hollywood accounting"? Wouldn't we see hospitals start to mess with their numbers in the same way to avoid the threshold for regulation?

Shouldn't they be obligated to? You can't help but create taxes and tax dodging at the same time, but the fact that people try to get away with murder is no reason to make murder legal.

Re: Hospitals that make profits should pay taxes

#130

Post by foldr »

echelon wrote: post #114
trust_bt_verify wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are they demanding that you are not? Everyone wants to be healthy and they want a medical system which helps them get there. If partying is a problem, they should be able to talk to a doctor about it, and it should be paid for as a part of the services provided by society.

> If partying is a problem, they should be able to talk to a doctor about it, and it should be paid for as a part of the services provided by society. I feel like I'm on an alien planet here. We should pay for people to get lifestyle advice? This is malinvestment. Put that money into research instead.

Paying for people to get lifestyle advice is a great investment as it reduces both the cost of their healthcare and various externalities associated with living in a society where lots of people are unhealthy.
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