Can this be improved? Yes, this was going to be improved but the politicians were invited to a fundraiser where they got good food and some freebies. And then it stopped. Or something like that...
A lot of for-profit businesses also take a lot of investments and fail to make much money.
I did a sponsored walk as a kid, I don't think I even raised enough to cover the cost of the petrol to get to the place it was at.
And I hear hospitals have to ask people to not do sponsored skydives to raise money for them, owing to the mean amount raised being lower than the mean cost of the healthcare they need to provide due to skydiving accidents.
(side note: Living in Europe, I never heard of skydiving as a popular way to do fundraisers – interesting!)
My understanding is that in the UK, the NHS is underfunded by taxes and therefore the hospitals do accept charitable support, but also very few people have private insurance on top of the HNS and the NHS hospitals will treat you no matter the cause.
Point is, it's more than just writing off parties and entertainment or high salaries, it's directly taking cash in pocket.
One especially crazy example of this thinking is the constant internal fundraising efforts. Most of the organizations I worked with were constantly doing internal fundraising, e.g. collecting donation from the same employees they were paying. These efforts would consume absolutely enormous amounts of on the clock employee time on frankly quite childish activities (think accountants doing arts and crafts with markers and construction paper) to raise a pittance in donations from their own employees. Most of the organizations did this once per month. In some cases this consumed an entire workday for a large proportion of employees for an average donation of $5-$15 dollars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beekeeper_(2024_film)
You'll get to see these call centers being blown up, and some scammers beaten or killed by the main protagonist. Also government/political conspiracy, because the main villain is the son of Mrs. President. And of course the secret service protecting her and family at all costs against revenge.
Maybe also elements of persiflage of current tech-guruism.
I’m talking otherwise Democrat northeasterners aiming to send a Republican to the Senate or vice versa. Nothing gets passed on this topic as long as the filibuster cannot be met.
It’s interesting to me. I can see benefitting from the status quo as well compared to some bills I’ve seen.
It also seems to not be true: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1508105/
According to LOTS of links hosted on many credible sites, that is false.
E.g. "Yes yes, we're well aware that breast cancer exists. Let's cure it with the money instead" is negative snark and appears to be completely unjustified.