Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren seem to think that businesses don’t exist to make a profit. Grilling Aetna, as they plan to do this week, over the “real” reason it left the Obamacare exchanges won’t change the program’s failed economics.
But wasn’t that the plan all along: to create a public/private system that would fail just in time for it to be replaced by a purely public one, á la Britain’s National Health Service?
Ah, the NHS.
Yesterday, it was reported that NHS Providers, the group representing British hospitals, warned that the NHS system is close to collapse. They claim that the NHS will have to cut staff, charge for services that are now “free,” or begin draconian rationing of already rationed healthcare services. Remember, too, that British “junior doctors,” i.e., medical residents, have promised to go on strike again over wages later this year.
Is this a peek at our own future or just of one possible future?
Either way, medical groups and healthcare entities of all stripes and sizes must take those possibilities into account in designing their business models and new ventures. What strategies will most likely survive further meddling with the market? Being too closely tied to hospitals doesn’t seem to be one of them.
