They don't need a more responsible owner. They need to be broken up like the monopolies they are, and stripped of their non-competition agreements. Right now, having a hospital in your town means your municipal/county government signed an agreement with the hosptital corporation that nobody else in the area would be allowed to offer the services the hospital offers, without the hospital's permission. This actively inhibits useful businesses like freestanding MRI shops, cash-only outpatient surgery centers, smaller hospitals, etc.
I am 100% onboard with anybody who has a sane, reasonable way to break that system: an exit strategy. It's not that we need to end the hospitals. It's that we need to open up the field to massive amounts of competition. One of the things that really struck me during the short spell where we lived overseas was... there were *so many* hospitals. It seemed like every neighborhood had a tiny hospital wedged into the end of a block somewhere, two floors. We did avail ourselves of some extensive medical care while we were there (I had a baby), and the quality of care was amazing compared to every single contact I've ever had with the medical system in the US. And this was emphatically *not* a "first-world" country. What they had going for them was, no employer insurance schemes (insurance was clinic-based, like you could be a subscriber to a particular clinic), and no medical monopolies. Care was high-quality and cheap.
While I would love to bankrupt every corrupt corporate (but I repeat myself) hospital in the country tomorrow, it's not actually good to leave huge geographic areas without a functioning inpatient medical facility. There needs to be a solution that allows for other businesses and institutions to sprout up, so there will be something to fill the void when the hospitals inevitably collapse under their own bureaucratic inertia, having been out-run, out-smarted, out-maneuvered, and out-competed by a myriad of smaller institutions: maternity-only hospitals, home-nursing services, neighborhood hospitals, small clinics, etc.
They don't need a more responsible owner. They need to be broken up like the monopolies they are, and stripped of their non-competition agreements. Right now, having a hospital in your town means your municipal/county government signed an agreement with the hosptital corporation that nobody else in the area would be allowed to offer the services the hospital offers, without the hospital's permission. This actively inhibits useful businesses like freestanding MRI shops, cash-only outpatient surgery centers, smaller hospitals, etc.
I am 100% onboard with anybody who has a sane, reasonable way to break that system: an exit strategy. It's not that we need to end the hospitals. It's that we need to open up the field to massive amounts of competition. One of the things that really struck me during the short spell where we lived overseas was... there were *so many* hospitals. It seemed like every neighborhood had a tiny hospital wedged into the end of a block somewhere, two floors. We did avail ourselves of some extensive medical care while we were there (I had a baby), and the quality of care was amazing compared to every single contact I've ever had with the medical system in the US. And this was emphatically *not* a "first-world" country. What they had going for them was, no employer insurance schemes (insurance was clinic-based, like you could be a subscriber to a particular clinic), and no medical monopolies. Care was high-quality and cheap.
While I would love to bankrupt every corrupt corporate (but I repeat myself) hospital in the country tomorrow, it's not actually good to leave huge geographic areas without a functioning inpatient medical facility. There needs to be a solution that allows for other businesses and institutions to sprout up, so there will be something to fill the void when the hospitals inevitably collapse under their own bureaucratic inertia, having been out-run, out-smarted, out-maneuvered, and out-competed by a myriad of smaller institutions: maternity-only hospitals, home-nursing services, neighborhood hospitals, small clinics, etc.