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There is nothing wrong with “lining your own pockets” as a motivation. It is the fundamental driver of capitalism and the motivation for most entrepreneurs.

coding123 9y ago
Just because it is a fundamental whatever of capitalism, doesn't make it 'not wrong'.
- pc86 9y ago
  Doesn't it? America is unapologetically a capitalist nation with a few notable and infuriating exceptions (looking at you, ISPs). I mean if you want to make an anti-capitalist argument on a message board owned by a venture capital firm, feel free. But by definition "profit = good"
  - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
    A venture-capitalist firm that's doing studies in Basic Income and its effects. So give them a little credit.
    - pc86 9y ago
      I don't think there's anything necessarily anti-capitalist about BI, especially if it could be shown that a given level of BI substituting certain social programs was more cost-effective. Increasing benefits while lowering taxes without raising the deficit or incurring debt would be a pretty easy sell to both sides of the aisle, I'd think.
      - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
        Its entirely orthogonal to Capitalism, surely?
        krapp 9y ago
        I think that depends on whether or not one views regulation or state influences on the free market as being anti-capitalist.
    - coding123 9y ago
      Yes however oligarchs don't want 99% of wealth to be in the hands of the 1%. Right now its something like 40% of the wealth in the hands of the 1%. If it shifts much more they will have total war on their hands. The rich will always be encouraged to keep that number down to prevent war - which is also convenient as those efforts can make them look like our lord and salvation.
  - coding123 9y ago
    true true, yesterday I saw someone make the argument "If popularity doesn't make something moral, what does" And on this thread it's "if capitalism doesn't make it moral, what does".. There's an entire college course called Philosophy I that basically goes over 7 to 10 different moral compasses. The only one that seems to win out (aka the only one people remember after the class is Moral Relativism).
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    We have to distinguish between capitalism and functioning markets. The capitalists do great in the US health system, but the market doesn't function.
Spoom 9y ago
I think in healthcare, there is a problem with profit as a motivation, at least insofar as the ability to receive care. I think healthcare professionals should be paid, and paid well. But a for-profit company (or whether or not one can pay the premiums or deductible of any insurance company) should not be a gatekeeper to whether or not one can receive care at all. Inevitably, someone will be left out in the cold, or will end up paying inordinate amounts to receive care due to bureaucracy (or malice), as has been experienced by people elsewhere in this thread. This is why I believe single payer healthcare is generally the best solution. However, in the current situation, I think this idea to create a healthcare company dedicated to serving their employees, "free from profit-making incentives and constraints," is a great idea, one which I hope others will attempt if it ends up a success.
- nojvek 9y ago
  Single payer healthcare is the best soln. Agreed, However I can’t see it working more than a presidential term. America is too politically unstable. What i’d love to see is a commercial business having vertical integration. Insanely cheap basics like X-rays, mris, and other checks. Heavy use of AI based diagnosis confirmed by doctors, and a big insurance pool where profits go back into scaling healthcare. Basically current American healthcare is not scalable. Period.
  - pc86 9y ago
    Who is going to develop AI-based diagnosis platforms if there's no profit to be made?
    - hidenotslide 9y ago
      Single payer does not mean non-profit, providers would still be for profit.
    - collyw 9y ago
      Who is going to sequence the human genome unless its for profit?
    - 9y ago
csours 9y ago
The problem comes from the drive for increased profit as time goes on, especially in healthcare.
- skellera 9y ago
  Did anyone read the article? It’s going To be set up as an independent company without profit as the motive. They know all their companies will earn more money if there is more money in everyone’s pockets. Look at how much some people are spending per year on healthcare. Someone in this thread mentioned $30k for his family in a year just for insurance. If he even saved a third of that, it’d end up being spent somewhere. A good economy benefits all those big companies. The losers in this are the healthcare companies.
  - csours 9y ago
    My comment is about publicly traded competitors to this new company. I suppose I could have been more clear.
    - skellera 9y ago
      Sorry, it seemed like others were making that assumption without reading the article. As long as this company doesn’t go public, it seems like it will be able to stay away from that. It will be extremely competitive against companies trying to raise profits.
  - philwelch 9y ago
    Also, the number of employees these three companies have, put together, mean that setting up a non-profit health provider and using it to provide employee coverage saves them money in their normal businesses. Amazon might decide to make their own networking hardware or their own power generation for their datacenters to save money, but they spend more money on headcount than on datacenters, and a huge chunk of the headcount expense goes to health insurance companies.
mtgx 9y ago
That's how you get healthcare lobbyists to get laws passed that screw over patients and how you end-up with medicine that rises 100x in price. Healthcare should be nationalized. Then the government would also have other positive incentives meant to lower healthcare costs, like reducing pollution, sugar in foods, other dangerous foods on the market, and so on.
11thEarlOfMar 9y ago
I believe that insurance companies welcome legislation and regulation. It requires them to hire more people and buy more equipment and services. All of that cost then gives them added justification to raise prices, because ‘we are a public company and have a duty to return profit to our shareholders.’ All of that regulation is expensive to start with, and needs a profit on top of it. Another true story, even with a Health Care provider and insurance company I don’t hate: after a routine visit, I had to spend more time on the phone with both of them than I spent in front of the Dr In order to have the service code corrected so the payment would count towards my deductible. The administrators I had to work with are paid employees, their costs not only have to be covered, but profitable. Very polite, capable and professional and completely unnecessary. I dare any non-American to come into our system and figure out in-network vs. out of network, co-payment, co-insurance, personal deductibles, family deductibles, lifetime maximums, deductible vs. non deductible services... and then write an App that compares plans, even within the same insurer’s portfolio and tells me which is the better plan. Intentional value obfuscation, unnecessarily complex, adds to the bottom line.
- collyw 9y ago
  My girlfriend is a doctor and says that working for the private care system she spends more time fighting with the insurance companies that treating patients - they want to pay for the cheapest drugs she wants to prescribe what is best. Fortunately we have the option of publicly funded health care here in Europe which is what she recommends for anything serious.
rubicon33 9y ago
I'm as much a capitalist as the next man, but lining your pockets when you're already a billionaire, at the expense of middle class, is downright pathetic.
- donarb 9y ago
  So you want a poor man on skid row to start a health care company?
OpenDrapery 9y ago
If you profit off sick people, are you motivated to move toward a world with no sick people? If you profit from prisons, then you need to fill you prisons. Problem is, that as a society, we should aim toward not needing prisons at all. Therein lies the rub. If I profit off of you being sick, then I need to keep you sick.
- skybrian 9y ago
  Generally speaking, insurance companies profit if they don't have to pay out, which is why they sometimes pay for prevention. But this has other problems. Incentives are tricky.
  - hidenotslide 9y ago
    Normally that would be true, but under ACA profits are capped at 25% of premiums. They can increase profits only by increasing premiums, which can be justified by rising costs. Private insurance companies in America have no incentive to lower healthcare costs.
    - skybrian 9y ago
      Well, that's true if they hit the cap and have no competition. If they don't have a 25% profit margin yet, they can still try to increase profits by cutting costs. There is also the strategy of lowering prices to increase market share. The downside I was hinting at is that as a patient, cutting costs isn't always what you want. If it means more prevention or paying less, it's good. Otherwise it'll probably mean worse service.
- stale2002 9y ago
  Insurance companies are more like gyms, actually. They profit much more if you pay them money but never use their service.
  - collyw 9y ago
    My friend had an insurance company that reduced his premiums if he checked in at the gym a certain amount of times per month.
collyw 9y ago
As a European I would disagree. We have helathcare for the purpose of keeping people healthy rather than for profit. It seems to work out a whole lot better than your system in the states.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  And at least in Germany doctors still have very nice cars so there is still a good amount of profit.
s73ver_ 9y ago
There is when that lining comes at the expense of the people that you're supposed to be helping.

coding123 9y ago

Just because it is a fundamental whatever of capitalism, doesn't make it 'not wrong'.

pc86 9y ago
Doesn't it? America is unapologetically a capitalist nation with a few notable and infuriating exceptions (looking at you, ISPs). I mean if you want to make an anti-capitalist argument on a message board owned by a venture capital firm, feel free. But by definition "profit = good"
- JoeAltmaier 9y ago
  A venture-capitalist firm that's doing studies in Basic Income and its effects. So give them a little credit.
  - pc86 9y ago
    I don't think there's anything necessarily anti-capitalist about BI, especially if it could be shown that a given level of BI substituting certain social programs was more cost-effective. Increasing benefits while lowering taxes without raising the deficit or incurring debt would be a pretty easy sell to both sides of the aisle, I'd think.
    - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
      Its entirely orthogonal to Capitalism, surely?
      - krapp 9y ago
        I think that depends on whether or not one views regulation or state influences on the free market as being anti-capitalist.
  - coding123 9y ago
    Yes however oligarchs don't want 99% of wealth to be in the hands of the 1%. Right now its something like 40% of the wealth in the hands of the 1%. If it shifts much more they will have total war on their hands. The rich will always be encouraged to keep that number down to prevent war - which is also convenient as those efforts can make them look like our lord and salvation.
- coding123 9y ago
  true true, yesterday I saw someone make the argument "If popularity doesn't make something moral, what does" And on this thread it's "if capitalism doesn't make it moral, what does".. There's an entire college course called Philosophy I that basically goes over 7 to 10 different moral compasses. The only one that seems to win out (aka the only one people remember after the class is Moral Relativism).
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  We have to distinguish between capitalism and functioning markets. The capitalists do great in the US health system, but the market doesn't function.

Spoom 9y ago

I think in healthcare, there is a problem with profit as a motivation, at least insofar as the ability to receive care. I think healthcare professionals should be paid, and paid well. But a for-profit company (or whether or not one can pay the premiums or deductible of any insurance company) should not be a gatekeeper to whether or not one can receive care at all. Inevitably, someone will be left out in the cold, or will end up paying inordinate amounts to receive care due to bureaucracy (or malice), as has been experienced by people elsewhere in this thread. This is why I believe single payer healthcare is generally the best solution. However, in the current situation, I think this idea to create a healthcare company dedicated to serving their employees, "free from profit-making incentives and constraints," is a great idea, one which I hope others will attempt if it ends up a success.

nojvek 9y ago
Single payer healthcare is the best soln. Agreed, However I can’t see it working more than a presidential term. America is too politically unstable. What i’d love to see is a commercial business having vertical integration. Insanely cheap basics like X-rays, mris, and other checks. Heavy use of AI based diagnosis confirmed by doctors, and a big insurance pool where profits go back into scaling healthcare. Basically current American healthcare is not scalable. Period.
- pc86 9y ago
  Who is going to develop AI-based diagnosis platforms if there's no profit to be made?
  - hidenotslide 9y ago
    Single payer does not mean non-profit, providers would still be for profit.
  - collyw 9y ago
    Who is going to sequence the human genome unless its for profit?
  - 9y ago

csours 9y ago

The problem comes from the drive for increased profit as time goes on, especially in healthcare.

skellera 9y ago
Did anyone read the article? It’s going To be set up as an independent company without profit as the motive. They know all their companies will earn more money if there is more money in everyone’s pockets. Look at how much some people are spending per year on healthcare. Someone in this thread mentioned $30k for his family in a year just for insurance. If he even saved a third of that, it’d end up being spent somewhere. A good economy benefits all those big companies. The losers in this are the healthcare companies.
- csours 9y ago
  My comment is about publicly traded competitors to this new company. I suppose I could have been more clear.
  - skellera 9y ago
    Sorry, it seemed like others were making that assumption without reading the article. As long as this company doesn’t go public, it seems like it will be able to stay away from that. It will be extremely competitive against companies trying to raise profits.
- philwelch 9y ago
  Also, the number of employees these three companies have, put together, mean that setting up a non-profit health provider and using it to provide employee coverage saves them money in their normal businesses. Amazon might decide to make their own networking hardware or their own power generation for their datacenters to save money, but they spend more money on headcount than on datacenters, and a huge chunk of the headcount expense goes to health insurance companies.

mtgx 9y ago

That's how you get healthcare lobbyists to get laws passed that screw over patients and how you end-up with medicine that rises 100x in price. Healthcare should be nationalized. Then the government would also have other positive incentives meant to lower healthcare costs, like reducing pollution, sugar in foods, other dangerous foods on the market, and so on.

11thEarlOfMar 9y ago

I believe that insurance companies welcome legislation and regulation. It requires them to hire more people and buy more equipment and services. All of that cost then gives them added justification to raise prices, because ‘we are a public company and have a duty to return profit to our shareholders.’ All of that regulation is expensive to start with, and needs a profit on top of it. Another true story, even with a Health Care provider and insurance company I don’t hate: after a routine visit, I had to spend more time on the phone with both of them than I spent in front of the Dr In order to have the service code corrected so the payment would count towards my deductible. The administrators I had to work with are paid employees, their costs not only have to be covered, but profitable. Very polite, capable and professional and completely unnecessary. I dare any non-American to come into our system and figure out in-network vs. out of network, co-payment, co-insurance, personal deductibles, family deductibles, lifetime maximums, deductible vs. non deductible services... and then write an App that compares plans, even within the same insurer’s portfolio and tells me which is the better plan. Intentional value obfuscation, unnecessarily complex, adds to the bottom line.

collyw 9y ago
My girlfriend is a doctor and says that working for the private care system she spends more time fighting with the insurance companies that treating patients - they want to pay for the cheapest drugs she wants to prescribe what is best. Fortunately we have the option of publicly funded health care here in Europe which is what she recommends for anything serious.

rubicon33 9y ago

I'm as much a capitalist as the next man, but lining your pockets when you're already a billionaire, at the expense of middle class, is downright pathetic.

donarb 9y ago
So you want a poor man on skid row to start a health care company?

OpenDrapery 9y ago

If you profit off sick people, are you motivated to move toward a world with no sick people? If you profit from prisons, then you need to fill you prisons. Problem is, that as a society, we should aim toward not needing prisons at all. Therein lies the rub. If I profit off of you being sick, then I need to keep you sick.

skybrian 9y ago
Generally speaking, insurance companies profit if they don't have to pay out, which is why they sometimes pay for prevention. But this has other problems. Incentives are tricky.
- hidenotslide 9y ago
  Normally that would be true, but under ACA profits are capped at 25% of premiums. They can increase profits only by increasing premiums, which can be justified by rising costs. Private insurance companies in America have no incentive to lower healthcare costs.
  - skybrian 9y ago
    Well, that's true if they hit the cap and have no competition. If they don't have a 25% profit margin yet, they can still try to increase profits by cutting costs. There is also the strategy of lowering prices to increase market share. The downside I was hinting at is that as a patient, cutting costs isn't always what you want. If it means more prevention or paying less, it's good. Otherwise it'll probably mean worse service.
stale2002 9y ago
Insurance companies are more like gyms, actually. They profit much more if you pay them money but never use their service.
- collyw 9y ago
  My friend had an insurance company that reduced his premiums if he checked in at the gym a certain amount of times per month.

collyw 9y ago

As a European I would disagree. We have helathcare for the purpose of keeping people healthy rather than for profit. It seems to work out a whole lot better than your system in the states.

maxxxxx 9y ago
And at least in Germany doctors still have very nice cars so there is still a good amount of profit.

s73ver_ 9y ago

There is when that lining comes at the expense of the people that you're supposed to be helping.