[QUOTE=dgillz;1420691]IMHO there
MUST be profits. How good of a car do you think we would drive or how good of a computer do you think we would own if there were no profits in it? Profit is not a dirty word, and a Cardiologist should make more than a GP, who should make more than a ditch digger, etc.
I do not expect health care professionals to feel "a calling" like one might expect from a nun or a man/woman of the cloth. They are there to make money, and they should.
QUOTE]
It works other places, why not here?
But in most European countries, Canada, Australia and Japan they have socialized financing, or socialized health insurance, not socialized medicine.
The government pays for care that is delivered in the private (mostly not-for-profit) sector. This is similar to how Medicare works in this country. Doctors are in private practice and are paid on a fee-for-service basis from government funds. The government does not own or manage their medical practices or hospitals.
http://www.pnhp.org/facts/singlepayer_faq.php
Also, Five percent of physicians account for about fifty percent of filed medical malpractice lawsuits. The total amount paid out in verdicts and settlements in all malpractice lawsuits is between $5 and $6 billion -- less than the amount spent just on dog food in this country. Only ten percent of medical malpractice victims even file a claim.
Yet according to the Harvard School of Public Health Physicians, 80,000 Americans die every year from medical negligence or worse just in hospitals alone. Hundreds of thousands are significantly injured. By comparison with the insurance premiums paid, one of the Harvard physicians estimated the cost of medical malpractice casualties to be over $60 billion a year.