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Try and look at it another way.

Profitable hospitals, even non-profit ones that can make money and roll it back into operations to buy modern equipment, update facilities, raise salaries, and hire more people are what has given us, even with its flaws, the best health care system in the world.

This is a country of 330+ million people. This isn’t Norway. Even with all our flaws and the high cost, there is nowhere else in the world I would rather be if I needed medical attention. And there is a reason for that.

In WWII, we had a major problem at the beginning of the war and leading up to it. We were unprepared. We didn’t have enough equipment, even obsolete equipment to fight. There was a man hired, Willam Knudsen (an unsung hero who is unknown to most Americans today) who was tasked with getting industry on board for a war we knew was coming.

Bill Knudsen had what sounded like an impossible task with goals that seemed ludicrously out of reach, this many airplanes per month, that many hulls on the ways, machine guns, bomb sights, life rafts, etc.

He went directly to Roosevelt and said that the only way we would ever be able to achieve any of those goals was to unleash the massive power of the profit motive. He was fought tooth and nail by the likes of Harold Ickes Sr. (Yes, the father of the Clinton Administration Ickes, and both of them anti-American scumbag politicians in the modern Democrat mold) but Knudsen convinced a reluctant Roosevelt and an actively hostile Ickes that it was the only way, to unleash the power of a capitalistic profit motive albeit with a government bent.

We see how that turned out. We were able to unleash the capitalistic beast on our enemies through the efforts of Bill Knudsen, Henry Kaiser, and so many others. Our military equipment was the best, our military was the best fed, best supplied, and we had everything in abundance we could send to the Soviets and England so they could fight effectively too. (This is brilliantly explained in the excellent book “Freedom’s Forge” by Arthur Herman)

The point is, the profit motive is of immense value in health care. Sure, we pay more. Sure, we could find ways to pare costs and so on. But almost anywhere in this country, if you need an MRI scan, you could get one in days, if not a week or two (at least before this pandemic BS)

There is a reason our cousins to the north who can afford to came down here to the USA for health care. If you needed an MRI scan up there in Canada, where they outlawed private MRI imaging centers, it could be many months. You could be dead or have a cancer spread beyond helping by the time you got on the table.

FWIW, I heard that Canada had to change it’s draconian policies and allow standalone imaging centers to be opened, which improved access for Canadian patients, but...they had to be dragged kicking and screaming to do it.

We don’t have that problem here...yet. And that is because the profit motive, while not as cuddly as a sincere wish to help your fellow man, is far more effective at delivering goods and services than any kind of altruism. On this, Ayn Rand was spot on.

I would avoid turning this into a class warfare/greed thing. There is function behind it. And it serves a valuable purpose, as much as Leftists and class warriors decry it. (Not at all saying you are of that bent, but there are many who are, even on this forum)