YES! Our health should not come second to corporate profits.
25%
YES! Obamacare isn’t enough. We need a single-payer system.
75%
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Thom's Blog Is On the Move
By webmaster
Hello All
Thom's blog in this space and moving to a new home.
Please follow us across to hartmannreport.com - this will be the only place going forward to read Thom's blog posts and articles.
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From Screwed:
"Thom Hartmann’s book explains in simple language and with concrete research the details of the Neo-con’s war against the American middle class. It proves what many have intuited and serves to remind us that without a healthy, employed, and vital middle class, America is no more than the richest Third World country on the planet."
From Screwed:
"The powers that be are running roughshod over the powers that OUGHT to be. Hartmann tells us what went wrong — and what you and I can do to help set American right again."
From Screwed:
"Hartmann speaks with the straight talking clarity and brilliance of a modern day Tom Paine as he exposes the intentional and systematic destruction of America’s middle class by an alliance of political con artists and outlines a program to restore it. This is Hartmann at his best. Essential reading for those interested in restoring the institution that made America the envy of the world."
If you take the "profit motive" out, you also take out a large portion of individuals who want to go into medicine. Yes, most, if not the overall majority endure the years of advanced education, long hours, continuing education and low pay (in the beginning), huge student debt, and high start up costs and malpratice premiums out of humanitarian reasons, but there also is the self interest reasons, and that includes the opportunity to make money; in some cases lots of it. In removing the "profit motive", you also reduce the interests to spend millions in R&D, not to mention years in trials.
Yes, the profit margins are sometimes unreasonable, but not always, and usually on certain drugs in order to help cover the costs of the hundreds or thousands of other deadends. However, the costs imposed by hospitials on some items are obscenely outragious, such as for gloves, bandaides, gauges, and some common medicines like aspirin, or for tests that aren't needed (even the markup on some tests are uncalled for).
In short, you can't eliminate the need for profit. It's essential for the same of motivation and afterall, someone has to pay the costs; this isn't free. However, there should be restrictions on the markups or overprescribing tests or even medicines. There should also be more emphasis on prevention; at least as much as on treatment. If we can reduce the causes up front, we will reduce on costs on the end.