And yet one more naive; stupid remark by our friends on the left (not to mention the press and its headline).
O’Malley said President Obama’s Affordable Care Act put some pieces in place toward prevention. In Maryland, while he was governor, he initiated a program aimed at “avoidable hospital readmissions” for diseases such as diabetes, focusing on prevention.
“But hospital CEOs keep their hospitals solvent by keeping the beds filled. We have to eliminate the profit motive,” he said.
via O’Malley says hospital CEOs help drive up health care costs.
There are a couple of things wrong with this rhetoric. There are 5,686 hospitals in the United States according to the AHA. Of those only 1,060 are for-profit operations; about the same number that are government-run. The bulk of hospitals, over 2,900 are non-profit community hospitals.
Second, isn’t it the CEOs job to keep the organization solvent, for-profit or not? A poorly run non-profit hospital that can’t stay solvent isn’t going to do anyone any good.
Perhaps, as it is with virtually any government program, the lack of a profit motive is what leads to inefficiency and waste, take Medicare as an example or even the co-op non-profit health plans promoted by Obamacare that are awash in red ink.
But a hospital that struggles to keep its beds full is telling you something else; maybe the hospital is not needed or should be smaller. Americans are noted for wanting convenience, instant gratification. Try and limit the convenience factor in health care and see what happens.
Ask a patient to wait a week for an MRI instead of an hour and listen to the feedback. That’s why there are as many labs and scanning centers as there are Chinese take-out restaurants. Competition you say? Well in health care, the need always rises to fit the supply of services available … funny thing about that😎
So once again, we have the glib and misleading rhetoric from politicians who see everything bad in profit (except when they are no longer in office) and good in more government.
Oh yeah, does the doctor have nothing to do with the hospital discharge or readmission?
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