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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

Most countries solve this by requiring hospitals to be non-profits and making insurance non-existent or also non-profit.

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More than half of US hospitals are non-profits, and Obamacare capped the profit % for insurance companies.

Yep, it was a start. But the insurance companies have figured out ways around the caps.

I've noticed that an awful lot of insurers around here seem to always be crying about "losing money" on seemingly every plan, now, and so demanding huge rate hikes every year. I don't believe that they're actually that terrible at their jobs—not the parts that directly relate to P&L, anyway—so I have to assume this is some part of scam they've worked out.

Around 75% of hospitals in the US are actually non-profit.

Source: https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/hospitals-by-owner...

All this ends up meaning is that any revenue above their expenses is plowed into hiring more and more administrative staff and building new facilities.

I didn't say it would solve all the problems, but it would help.

Agreed, adding a profit motive on top of that only makes it worse.

Scripps, the hospital in question, is already a non-profit. Their domain even ends in .org! They also have posters asking for donations, and will send mailers asking for donations as well.

Non-profit doesn't mean you can't make a profit, just that you can't distribute it to shareholders.

Big salaries, perks, and bonuses to executives is just fine.

They usually tie it to caps on executive salary and bonus, but even without it's still better than for-profit.

Why is it better? Non-profits don't have the efficiency incentive that for-profits do, as far as I understand it. I've read a few things that indicate non-profit hospitals are full of fiscal bloat, because there's no incentive to act otherwise. On mobile now, but can search for a few sources.

> Non-profits don't have the efficiency incentive that for-profits do, as far as I understand it.

Sure they do. They have revenue and expenses to manage just like a for-profit business does.

> I've read a few things that indicate non-profit hospitals are full of fiscal bloat, because there's no incentive to act otherwise.

This is not unique to non-profit ones.

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