"Healthcare as a Business" has many, many problems. Here's just one:

[Junkdrawer]

Potential Cancer Cure in Canada Hits Dead End

The idea that the "Free Market" is the best solution to every problem is deadly.

[Warpy]

1. That's because sickness is never a consumer decision

It's nothing we can save up for, anticipating a nasty cold if we're working class and the need for a multiple organ transplant if we're rich. It strikes us at random, at its own pleasure, in its own time, and doesn't respect our finances.

Just when we're unable to work and least able to pay out huge sums of money to be able to paste ourselves together enough to get back to work, the marketplace starts demanding huge sums of money we don't have and have no way of obtaining. That's why we developed insurance in the first place, a way to spread the cost among as many of us as possible so that the few who are unlucky every year are spared the ultimate disaster, an unnecessary death with nothing to leave to those left behind.

It worked fine while it was nonprofit. Oh, it was far from perfect but it did work for most people. Enter the MBA and their notion of Friedman's perfect world and the system completely fell apart.

Illness is not a consumer decision. Until it is, it doesn't belong in the marketplace.

[Junkdrawer]

2. It warps many parts of our system....

For example, the US has 25% GPs and 75% specialists. In Canada it's 50/50.

[pansypoo53219]

3. medical industrial complex.

like trying to kill a plane the army doesn't want.