Skip to main content

Eric Hanneken's Library tagged profit →  View Popular

24 Nov 09

Would ObamaCare Kill Medical Innovation?

  • Many regard the profit motive as cruel, but might it actually produce compassionate results? After all, America has generated vastly more medical innovations than other nations.
  • If America follows the lead of the rest of the world and clamps down on profits in health care, who will make tomorrow's wonder drugs?
03 Nov 09

FACT CHECK: Health insurer profits not so fat

Of course, established health insurers do enjoy some protection from competition, thanks mostly to state governments.

apnews.myway.com/...D9BI4D6O1.html - Preview

health insurance business profit politics

  • Quick quiz: What do these enterprises have in common? Farm and construction machinery, Tupperware, the railroads, Hershey sweets, Yum food brands and Yahoo? Answer: They're all more profitable than the health insurance industry.
  • Ledgers tell a different reality. Health insurance profit margins typically run about 6 percent, give or take a point or two. That's anemic compared with other forms of insurance and a broad array of industries, even some beleaguered ones.
27 Aug 09

The Case for Real Health Care Competition: ObamaCare will restrict choice, not expand it

  • In a free market, a business that is complacent about costs learns that its prices are too high when it sees lower-cost competitors winning over its customers. The market—actually, the consumer—holds businesses accountable and keeps them honest. No "public option" is needed.
  • "Competition is valuable only because, and so far as, its results are unpredictable and on the whole different from those which anyone has, or could have, deliberately aimed at," Hayek wrote.

    Well-meaning politicians have created untold misery by assuming they and their experts know enough already.
  • 1 more annotations...
24 Aug 09

Obama’s Health-Insurance Cartel

  • We’ll use HR 3200 as our guide.
  • No insurance policy would be deemed qualified unless it satisfied the conditions imposed by the government. This is important because under the bill, every individual would be mandated to have a “qualified” health plan. A sub-standard plan that nevertheless satisfied a particular consumer — such as low-cost high-deductible catastrophic coverage — would be forbidden.
  • 6 more annotations...
17 Aug 09

Ideas On Liberty

  • Before blaming the profit motive for the problems in the industry, critics might want to look at the ways in which existing government programs like Medicare and Medicaid, the interpretation of tort laws, and regulations such as those that limit who can practice what sorts of medicine might lead firms and professionals to engage in behavior that is profitable but unbeneficial to consumers. Labeling the profit motive as the source of the problem enables the critics to ignore the really difficult questions about how institutions, policies, and laws affect the profit-seeking incentives of producers and how that profit-seeking behavior translates into outcomes. Placing the blame on the profit motive without qualification simply overlooks the Smithian question of whether better institutions would enable the profit motive to generate better results and whether current policies or regulations are the source of the problem because they guide the profit motive in ways that produce the very problems the critics identify.
  • If blaming the profit motive entails giving government a bigger role in solving problems, what assurance can critics of the profit motive provide that political officials will be any less self-interested and that their self-interest will produce any better results?
  • 1 more annotations...
16 Oct 08

Wal-Mart, Private Sector Moved Faster After Katrina Than FEMA

  • So, why is Wal-Mart so good at getting customers what they want? What makes Kappa Horn so passionate about keeping her diner in business? [FEMA spokesman Jim] Stark says, "probably because they're for-profit."

    It's that profit motive that leads people to cooperate without government telling them what to do, and it's helping bring New Orleans back to life, one block at a time.
27 Oct 04

What a Bargain!

Don Boudreaux reports on a recent working paper by William Nordhaus, which estimates that innovators capture only 2.2% of the net value of their innovations.

cafehayek.typepad.com/...what_a_bargain.html - Preview

innovation surplus profit Economics

1 - 7 of 7
Showing 20▼ items per page

Selected Tags

Related Tags

Sponsored Links

Ads by Google

Highlighter, Sticky notes, Tagging, Groups and Network: integrated suite dramatically boosting research productivity. Learn more »

Join Diigo