Publicly traded is a tiny fraction of the healthcare industry. Of the dozen or so hospitals in Seattle, for example, only one is owned by a publicly traded comp

Publicly traded is a tiny fraction of the healthcare industry. Of the dozen or so hospitals in Seattle, for example, only one is owned by a publicly traded company. Even if they're technically non-profit, that doesn't mean they don't realize a profit. It just means that the profit needs to be spent elsewhere. This is model that most university medical centers use: make a shit ton of money in healthcare, and then use it on the school or pay fat paychecks to the board of directors. I think when people talk about profits they aren't talking about GAAP profits, they're talking about rent seeking. There is a shit ton of that everywhere. For example, when I went to the ER for a kidney stone at a non-profit hospital, I ended up getting 8 bills. One was from the hospital. Then I got one from the lab that ran the CT Scanner, one from the Radiologist that analyzed the ct scan, one from the pharmacy that provided the drugs I was given, and four bills from the four ER doctors making their rounds through the ER, asking how I was feeling, and then checking a box on the chart. Each 5 minute visit was rounded up to the hour. That's all "profit" in the colloquial sense, but it wouldn't show up in the P&L of a publicly traded company even if the organization was publicly traded.