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Politics : View from the Center and Left
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To: Cogito who wrote (130309)2/6/2010 9:07:12 AM
From: Lane3  Read Replies (1) of 541945
 
There's the profit, plus the cost of advertising and promotion, among other things.

There is no question that there are costs in a profit system that don't exist in other systems.

The cost of advertising and promotion cannot be attributed to a profit system. My carrier is not-for-profit. It has promotion costs. Those costs are a function of having multiple providers rather than single payer. You cannot attribute them to profit.

Here, we have lots of organizations designed to make a profit by coming up with all kinds of different health insurance plans, advertising and marketing them, and then making sure that they never pay out too much.

See above. Multiple providers, whether for profit or not, will have to take care that they don't pay out too much.

I guess it's just a question of deciding what the goal is.

I take that as an reference to a perceived goal of profit. If so, I don't think it holds up.

I know what I would prefer it to be.

What would you prefer the goal to be?

I would have two goals. One would be to maximize the overall output of the system in terms of benefit and cost-effectiveness. The other would be to not constrain individual options to pursue individual results when their lives are at stake. I am indifferent to whether or not anyone makes a profit. If it takes profit to meet my goals, fine. If it takes removing profit to meet my goals, that's fine, too. In case anyone things otherwise, my argument has not been in favor of profit. My argument has been against what I believe to be a mistaken and misguided notion that profit is a key element of the problem we face.

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