One could say, that without health, there is no life – so therefore, good health is something of not only personal importance, but also of national importance. The thing about for-profit health care is the salient fact that those that are in any business for profit, are clearly going to, concentrate upon that profit, above all, especially when they are publicly traded companies that have to answer to a responsible corporate board as well as to its stockholders. What many people may not realize, is that health care seems to be the type of business that has serious economic moats that thus keeps the bigger players, quite satisfied, because they are in the type of enterprise in which the returns and profits are enviable, without seemingly having to unduly worry about their business model ever being disrupted by any upstarts.
In fact, as written in Forbes magazine, the five biggest health care corporations in the world, are all American, and are respectively, United Health Group, Johnson & Johnson, CVS Health, Pfizer, and AbbVie. United Health Group was founded in 1977, Johnson & Johnson was founded in 1886, CVS Health was founded in 1963, Pfizer was founded in 1849, and Abbott Laboratories which became AbbVie was founded in 1888. This thus means, that the five biggest health care providers are all themselves, institutions that have been around for decades upon decades, if not for over a century. Additionally, each of these corporations had profits in the multi-billions in 2021 and there isn’t any reason not to expect that to continue for each of them, well into the future.
The thing about health care, is quite frankly, people are going to pay directly or indirectly whatever that they need to pay to maintain their health – for the alternative to not doing so, can be rather catastrophic for them. We see ample proof of this by the fact that United States health care spending in 2021 was a staggering $4.3 trillion. Clearly, this amount of money in play, would be incentive enough, for anybody or any institution, desiring to get ahead, to want to try their hand at getting some of what is clearly a gargantuan amount of money. Yet, what we so see, is that the biggest health care companies, do not appear to be ceding much ground, if any, to rivals.
This would evidently imply that the way that health care is currently structured through our capitalistic system, is consistent with the belief that truly competitive capitalism for the biggest companies in the health care industry, appears not to be functioning the way that such was intended to be. This thus signifies, that this government needs to take into serious consideration, that in lieu of all the monies exiting the pockets of the people as well as the government of that people, that thus goes into the hands of these corporate behemoth health care companies, that such needs to be fully examined and then re-examined, instead. One way to investigate this, is to question as to whether a for-profit health care industry is actually beneficial in its structure for the health of the people, in whole – especially in consideration that the overall health of Americans in comparison to other western nations is indicative that not all is actually well within America – though it must be said all is quite well for these gargantuan health care companies.