while i feel a profit driven health system is bad,it is not inherently evil.
they are a publicly traded corporation and it is in their charter to put profit over all else.this creates a conflict that can only be resolved by removing the profit motive.
understanding what a corporation actually is,and what its chartered to do is vitally important to understanding this discussion.
farhad posted a fantastic documentary that does just that:
http://www.videosift.com/search?q=the+corporation

>> ^enoch:
while i feel a profit driven health system is bad,it is not inherently evil.
they are a publicly traded corporation and it is in their charter to put profit over all else.this creates a conflict that can only be resolved by removing the profit motive.

You don't feel that a corporation dealing in health and human lives placing profit above people is inherently evil?

There are many many many places in the business world to make copious amounts of capitalistic profit at the expense of the consumer. This should not be one of them.

But I suppose people with ridiculous profits can spend quite a bit of that on lobbyists and PR campaigns to make you feel the devil you know is the best thing ever!

>> ^demon_ix:
>> ^enoch:
while i feel a profit driven health system is bad,it is not inherently evil.
they are a publicly traded corporation and it is in their charter to put profit over all else.this creates a conflict that can only be resolved by removing the profit motive.

You don't feel that a corporation dealing in health and human lives placing profit above people is inherently evil?
There are many many many places in the business world to make copious amounts of capitalistic profit at the expense of the consumer. This should not be one of them.
But I suppose people with ridiculous profits can spend quite a bit of that on lobbyists and PR campaigns to make you feel the devil you know is the best thing ever!


no no no,
you missed my point.
my point is that corporations are designed this way.
we..as people,make moral and immoral choices.which can be construed as evil depending on the relative context.
a corporation is not a person,and to assign morality to a non-entity is like calling a machine evil.
the machine may be designed to do evil things but it,the machine,is not evil.
example:
if you were a CEO of a major health insurance corporation and decided that your company was no longer going to refuse care,nor were you going to drop liability on those with terminal problems.
while in a humanitarian sense that would be wonderful,you would be fired immediately.
why?why would you be fired for doing what we all feel is the "right thing to do"?
because you destroyed the cost/benefit equation and therefore lost profits.
which in turn means shareholders lose money,which in turn means less will invest in your company.
evil is subjective,to label a corporation evil based on it doing what it was designed to do is like calling a shark evil for attacking a swimmer.
it does what it was designed to do.
what we have to do is change the design.
i do not think health care should be profit driven because it becomes a conflict of interest,and only those who need care actually end up paying the price.
please watch the documentary link i posted.
its long,but it will give you the context of what a corporation actually is,where it came from and how it can bode both good and ill for a society.

Publicly traded corporations are required by law to make a good faith effort to make a profit for their shareholders. There is nothing that requires them to commit unscrupulous business practices in order to do so.

The Health industry has put profits ahead of their customers, and have damaged their position so much that they are now facing what will lead to their downfall.

Their greed has become their undoing.

All I can say is Good Riddance.

In a generation, when Americans no longer have to put off seeking care for illness or injury do to lack of funds; when they'll no longer have to suffer needlessly as cancer devours their body because their "insurance" was taken away when they needed it most; and when diseases will be cured not simply have their symptoms treated; we'll all look back on the last four decades and wonder how we ever managed without, and why we didn't decide to do it in the 1950s like every other industrialized nation.

*dead

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