Patients are more likely to fall, get new infections, or experience other forms of harm during their stay in a hospital after it is acquired by a private equity firm, according to a new study led by researchers at Harvard Medical School.
Not to worry! The competition of the elderly and terminal who are living there will allow them to just pack their bags and move to another place easily and without impact to their wellbeing because of their freedom of choice in this wonderful free market guided by the invisible hand
It's almost like privatizing public services is, somehow, a bad idea. But, but, but... capitalism....
E: jokes aside. The findings in these studies, while obvious to some (possibly most) people, are extremely important. Feelings without supporting data, are just opinions. Feeling with supporting data, are facts. Because of this study, we now have facts to fight against further privatization of public services.
I don't know, I'm starting to get the sneaking suspicion that "good" and "profitable" aren't synonyms. It's almost as if there is often a financial incentive to make things worse...
Quality, especially in a service like healthcare, often doesn't mean profit. It's all about "how low can i make my overhead costs to make my good/service just BARELY passable, then take it one step lower".
Many of these hospitals were capitalist before the takeover too -- they just were beholden to local owners rather than big national firm owners.
Local ownership is a VERY powerful check on the power of capital. Communities can hold sway over owners beyond what is reflected the general ledger of the business. And one of the reasons big national brands are good at out-competing local business is precisely BECAUSE they can ignore these social costs -- even externalize them -- and reap further profit for the exercise.
Even if you're anticapitalist as fuck, this is why it is still important to buy and support local business whenever possible. Because the less local the business is, the less it cares about its customers and employees' welfare.
And when local owners get greedy and want to sell to big firms, it's very important to hit them with as much social punishment as possible. Friends don't let friends sell their businesses to hedge funds.
Local ownership can cut both ways. Local businessmen reach a certain level of wealth and power and can essentially take over the entire town. It's how you end up with situations like the Murdaughs.
However you look at it, the overconsolidation of wealth always has negative impscts.
Also a lot of hospitals were not for profit. It may upset the atheist crowd here but they were run by religious organizations as charities. Not that they didn't make money, but everything was reinvested back into care.
Privatization is the biggest scam of the 20th and 21st centuries. It has ruined every service it's touched and made them all more expensive. The exact opposite of what Neoliberal clowns keep telling us.
Just a reminder that the point of researching the validity of things we intuitively know to be true is to provide the empirical data and expert analysis that can be used in, say, legal decisions or legislative processes.
Haha good one. The only data that matters to those in charge is what makes them more money, and the business friends more money and the lobbyists more money. Other data is basically irrelevant with the current asshiles that are in charge.
I remember reading about this in an architectural monthly like 10 years ago or more:
It didn't matter how "high-end" the building they were constructing was, they were always using the cheapest building materials available and long-term viability of the structure was a sincere afterthought.
The increases are seen in conditions or outcomes deemed preventable and are key measures of hospital safety and quality.
But not profit. If these hospitals were paid based on decreasing preventable conditions we'd all be much better off.
Right now coming into a hospital twice is more profitable than coming into a hospital once. If we (insurance) paid based on minimizing visits then both hospital safety and quality would increase.
That isn't to say it's perfect. Corporations will always find loop-holes in the name of profit, but it would be a good first step. (Assuming we're going to have for-profit hospitals at all, which is the real mistake.)