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>>Perhaps if someone has cancer, nobody should profit?

Does that mean the doctors and nurses and others should all work for free to? If individual people can 'profit' by providing care, i.e. a doctor, why can't a collection of people providing the same service, but as a company be allowed to profit as well?

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"not profit from" != "work for free"

The healthcare system in Europe doesn't gauge its sick citizens the way the U.S. healthcare system does, and yet, last I checked, doctors in Europe, while certainly earning less than in the U.S., do not "work for free" or are unable to provide for themselves and their families.

Why aren’t the Europeans cranking out new medications at cost then?

No one is saying that drugs have to be provided "at cost" (that's very similar to the fallacy of the "do you expect us to work for free?" argument).

Is not the definition of profit the excess charge after removing costs? By definition “no one should profit” does mean “at cost”.

technically yes, but sometimes people think of "at cost" meaning that people aren't getting paid (the price covers the material costs).

But what I really meant "inordinately profit from" so I should have specified that

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