Why Blue Cross Healthcare Is Unlike Toyota Manufacturing
Yglesias on Krugman on health care:
It’s worth saying, of course, that people who kill people in exchange for money in the US health care sector aren’t, on some level, bad people. If you worked for an insurance company and construed your job as facilitating the delivery of medically useful health care to patients in need, you’d rapidly find yourself unemployed. Similarly, a doctor whose practices don’t serve the insurance company’s needs will find himself off the roster and useless to anyone. A company that cared more about helping sick people than earning profits would see its stock value decline to the point where it would be taken over by some other company that was willing to kill for money.
It’s the logic of the system and on some level it’s no different from any other business. But whereas Apple or Toyota or Starbucks make money by delivering their products to people, insurance companies make money by not delivering health care to sick people.
There are some things for which a private, for-profit entity is not the best agent. Providing health care is one of them.
Update: Changed the title in response to RSS’s comment.
“There are some things for which a private, for-profit entity is not the best agent. Providing health care is one of them.”
Too bad Blue Cross isn’t for-profit, otherwise you might have a point…try United next time…
Damn, that’s embarrassing. It looks like while the national Blue Cross Blue Shield Association is non-for-profit, and even Blue Cross Blue Shield of MA is not-for-profit, some of its subsidiaries (like BCBSMA HMO Blue, Inc) are.
I think you’ll find that, despite my goof on the specifics, I still have a point.