Why not? Companies that make pharmaceuticals, prosthetics, imaging devices, etc are all on the stock market too, so if hospitals weren’t on there, you could build a portfolio to approximate it by buying producers of medical equipment.
The real issue isn’t whether something is publicly traded, but collusion between groups to keep prices high. For example, it’s mutually beneficial for insurance, hospitals, and medical equipment providers to increase costs. Higher equipment costs means care providers can charge more (what’s another few hundred when the bill is in the thousands?), and higher total bills means insurance companies can charge higher premiums (they’re usually limited to a certain percent of cost as profit). Hospitals generally don’t have direct competitors since it’s prohibitively expensive to build one and there’s lots of bureaucracy based on “need,” so you can’t just go next door to an org that’s not involved in the collusion.
There are lots of viable solutions here, but banning them from the stock market isn’t going to solve anything. The first order of business imo is making everything more transparent.
I know it’s an anecdote, but I have a coworker that shared an experience moving from Canada to the US, and they said they much prefer the American healthcare system to the Canadian system. This is from the perspective of a relatively well off individual (not rich, just middle to upper middle class), so obviously someone at the bottom end of the income spectrum would have a different opinion.
So my question for people who promote socialized medicine is this: if you could easily afford both, would you prefer socialized or privatized medicine? And why?
I think we have a cost problem, not a structural problem, so we should look at ways of reducing cost before completely changing the structure of our healthcare system. My primary concern is getting insurance away from employers, publicly funding emergency services, and making hospital costs more transparent (e.g. publicly posted price ranges for common procedures). As in, reform the current system, not replace it.
Why not? Companies that make pharmaceuticals, prosthetics, imaging devices, etc are all on the stock market too, so if hospitals weren’t on there, you could build a portfolio to approximate it by buying producers of medical equipment.
The real issue isn’t whether something is publicly traded, but collusion between groups to keep prices high. For example, it’s mutually beneficial for insurance, hospitals, and medical equipment providers to increase costs. Higher equipment costs means care providers can charge more (what’s another few hundred when the bill is in the thousands?), and higher total bills means insurance companies can charge higher premiums (they’re usually limited to a certain percent of cost as profit). Hospitals generally don’t have direct competitors since it’s prohibitively expensive to build one and there’s lots of bureaucracy based on “need,” so you can’t just go next door to an org that’s not involved in the collusion.
Here’s some YouTube videos about it:
There are lots of viable solutions here, but banning them from the stock market isn’t going to solve anything. The first order of business imo is making everything more transparent.
The real issue is the belief that essential services should make profit. Socialized, regulated Healthcare FTW.
I disagree.
I know it’s an anecdote, but I have a coworker that shared an experience moving from Canada to the US, and they said they much prefer the American healthcare system to the Canadian system. This is from the perspective of a relatively well off individual (not rich, just middle to upper middle class), so obviously someone at the bottom end of the income spectrum would have a different opinion.
So my question for people who promote socialized medicine is this: if you could easily afford both, would you prefer socialized or privatized medicine? And why?
I think we have a cost problem, not a structural problem, so we should look at ways of reducing cost before completely changing the structure of our healthcare system. My primary concern is getting insurance away from employers, publicly funding emergency services, and making hospital costs more transparent (e.g. publicly posted price ranges for common procedures). As in, reform the current system, not replace it.