The existence of for-profit healthcare is reasonably why hospitals have to shut departments in the middle of a pandemic to handle balance sheets. If for-profit healthcare didn't exist, I really don't see how the total amount of money going into a hospital would decrease right now.

You are conflating “for profit” with private. Most good hospitals are non profit, but private institutions.

To help you understand how this could decrease revenue - my annual checkup is postponed by 6 months. This is true for everyone who had an annual checkup scheduled.

I agree. but the existence of for-profit healthcare is largely why the US is the only country without public healthcare.

This is a common misconception about health care. Most countries have a mix of private/public funding a mix of private/public run health care. Canada is almost all non-profit charity hospitals, but other OECD countries use for profit hospitals. For example:

>...The study, released Tuesday, compared the universal health-care systems of Australia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland, and looked at the presence of for-profit hospitals and for-profit health-care insurers in each of these countries. ... The study found that for-profit health-care insurers and for-profit hospitals are found in all six countries. This is in contrast to Canada, where similar for-profit insurance is not allowed, and where only a small number of private, for-profit hospitals exist.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/for-profit-care-can-exist-in-a...

Sure, but in all of those countries health care insurers are incredibly tightly controlled and the state is still by far the biggest insurer. Which is why the state can and will fund hospitals directly after this crisis.

>Sure, but in all of those countries health care insurers are incredibly tightly controlled...

Insurance companies in the US are also "incredibly tightly controlled". Regulations even specify amounts that can be spent on patient care, administration etc. Health insurers are the only segment of the health care sector in the US where profits are directly limited.

>Which is why the state can and will fund hospitals directly after this crisis.

I don't think that has anything to do with it.

It does have a lot to do with it, as it directly nullifies the issue the OP was talking about.

When I mean incredibly tightly controlled, I mean effectively price controls, and very stringent ones at that, and all of them have the state as the main insurer anyways, while AFAIK the US does not insure anyone directly.

>...AFAIK the US does not insure anyone directly

The government provides health insurance to many people. 44 million people are insured by Medicare. 74 million people are insured by Medicaid. Over 1 million veterans get their health care provided by the government run VA medical system.

As I pointed out, most countries have a mix of private/public funding a mix of private/public run health care. Lots of people seem to be under the misconception that universal health care coverage is only possible in a Canadian or UK type health care system.

What?

Even non-profit, publicly funded hospitals are feeling the squeeze. Most are paid on a fee-for-service basis. If you cancel all your elective surgeries, there goes a huge chunk of funding. Yet you still need to pay salaries and other overhead.

It's not like non-profit hospitals are suddenly immune to the realities of economics.

Publicly funded healthcare does not work the way you think it does. There is a budget allocated to healthcare every year, if one year the hospitals don't have enough money to cover expenses but that there is still money left in the coffers (for example, due to less electives), then they will end up getting the money they need to operate.

Were it not for for-profit healthcare, the US would almost certainly operate this way.

There are probably 170 different versions of public systems. I think you're making the mistake of assuming they all operate the same way.

In both public systems I've been a part of, yes there is a hospital budget, but it's paid out through procedures. Don't have anyone in the hospital? No payment.

Sure, but what I'm telling you is that in the event of a major event that means that the amount of procedures goes down drastically which means the healthcare budget is not depleted, but that hospitals need to money to deal with a pandemic, the state steps in and will fund the hospitals.

Non profits just make profits in a different way. Either the money goes to the leadership or into an endowment or new buildings or something else. Don’t confuse non profit with not greedy or not profitable. They are basically the same as for profit hospitals as far as cost goes.

My parent comment does not mention Mayo Clinic. I'm mainly talking about hospitals that operate only for profit.

Apparently many US hospitals are formally non-profits but operate very much in a corporate logic. What did mayo do with its bn profit last year that Op mentioned?

Mayo earns $12bn per year.

As contrast, a hospitals in Germany for a whole year cost €105bn, with an average total cost per stay (including operations etc ) of 4500€.

https://www.destatis.de/DE/Presse/Pressemitteilungen/2018/11...