Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmclnx | Hacker News Reader

WSJ ? Why bother even reading it.

The reason is simple, for profit healthcare, simple as that.

In my area I am old enough to remember when all hospitals where I live where run by various charities. My small city of 100,000 people we had 3 hospitals. 2 run by Roman Catholics and a third was non-profit. Back then things were kind of cheap when compared to what people's salaries were.

Now there is only 1, owned by Tufts. The non-profits were pretty much eliminated in the late 80s or early 90s, and no one can pay their hospital bill without insurance. Even with insurance it is very hard to pay up.

So there is your answer :)

View on HN

All the hospitals where I live (except for 1) are owned by non-profits. Actually, they're all owned by one charity, the Catholic Church. Who are also buying up all the local doctors offices. And yet prices are going up, the number of services being provided is going down, with the added benefit of them forcing their religious beliefs on us.

Which hospital system is this?

Providence

Are they run by the same charity, Catholic Charities ?

The 2 Catholic hospitals I referred to were run by 2 different Catholic Orders, one based in Quebec and I think the other was based in the US. Those 2 "merged" and then they were purchased by the third, then later on became that one became owned by Tufts sometime within the past couple of years.

Now I would not be surprised Catholic Charities is the only one left. Also these days seems all charities have started chasing "profits" too.

I don't know the specifics of the hospital, but I imagine the admin staff working there is still solving for higher salaries and increasing the size of the staff, with patient outcomes being a secondary goal. Because that is human nature.

For profit is probably a good theory to explain why American health care is so expensive, but it is not so good as an explanation for why the cost is increasing.

If you look at per capita health care spending over the last 50 years in the US and other first world countries what you see is that spending has increased at roughly the same rate in most of them.

That suggests that the increases aren't due to peculiarities of individual systems (e.g., the heavy dependency on for profit providers in the US) but rather due to something common to most health care systems.

Hospitals are not the issue, the insurance industry is.

Hospitals are a large part of the issue.

https://www.sensible-med.com/p/the-entire-healthcare-system-...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com