[geeks] healthcare was: nVidia 8800GT for Apple Mac Pro

[Phil Stracchino]

Shannon Hendrix wrote:
... a whole bunch of stuff I can hardly do anything but nod at and 
agree.  Yup, that's the lion's share of the problem, all right. 
Healthcare as profit vehicle, instead of healthcare as public good.

I have occasionally considered that if there is any legislative way to 
make any substantive progress to fixing healthcare, it would be to pass 
a law declaring that all direct medical providers and health insurers 
must be operated as not-for-profit corporations.  (There'd probably have 
to be a provision forbidding the ownership or control of, say, a 
hospital and a medical-devices company by the same corporation or body 
of investors, or they could just charge outrageous prices for the 
devices which the hospital would of course then pay, much akin to the 
Sentara/Optima scam you cite.)

But even if such a law was feasible, practical and enforceable, it'd 
never happen, because the corporations affected would scream bloody 
murder, and because we have the best Congress money can buy.  And it 
doesn't even have the integrity to stay bought.


-- 
   Phil Stracchino, CDK#2     DoD#299792458     ICBM: 43.5607, -71.355
   alaric at caerllewys.net   alaric at metrocast.net   phil at co.ordinate.org
          Renaissance Man, Unix ronin, Perl hacker, Free Stater
                  It's not the years, it's the mileage.