"lgb" wrote in message
...
In article ,
says...

Health care - no matter what form it took, has always been a "profit
center". Even the family doctor of old who holds such an emotional
place in
our imaginations, was in it for the profit. Profit all by iteslf is not
contrary to good health care.

Being old enough to remember family doctors making house calls, and
hanging quarantine signs, I disput the profit motive. I'm sure there
were some thus motivated, but I personally knew one who practiced where
payment was in corn, chickens, and the occasional crumpled dollar. And
several who opted for low incomes by practicing in rural and small city
areas and setting their prices to what people could afford.


Insurance companies have *always* been a for profit venture. They did
this
by spreading risk, but it has always been for the purpose of profit and
not
for any other reason.


Also not true. The first insurance companies were cooperative ventures
of "spreading the risk" among merchants. They were protecting their
profits, but the "company" per se made no profits.


Indeed, the "Blues," which began as the insurer of last resort are a
not-for-profit outfit here in MI. They tried to change it, but got whacked
soundly.

OTOH, hospitals which are not-for-profit have a way of expanding endlessly
into new markets and growing in equipment in order to spend the money that
would otherwise show as "profit," and cause them to get whacked.