Linking Health Care for the Poor to Health Care for Profit

Privatization in Health Care: Shifting the Risk

“…These include assessing the generalizability of the concept over a diverse group of employers of different sizes and industries, developing ways to monitor and control biased selection and other ways of &dquo;gaming the system&dquo; on the part of employers, analyzing and choosing appropriate rating and pricing mechanisms for reimbursement, regulating the new &dquo;insurance carrier&dquo; status of the employer groups, and developing tools to educate Medicare beneficiaries about the new arrangements and to monitor their implementation and their impact on quality of care. The Wolfson, Levin, and Brock (1987) plan for tax-based incentives appears fairly straightforward. The authors point out that the United States has a long history of using tax incentives to induce the private sector to produce goods and services for the public good.…”

“…An innovative plan has been suggested by Wolfson, Levin, and Brock (1987) for linking capital to indigent care. Their model calls for the sale of tax-exempt bonds by public authorities and the use of the proceeds toward three ends: an indigent care pool, a fund to provide working capital for participating hospitals, and an endowment that would service the debt on the bonds.…”

The Business Community and the Poor: Rethinking Business Strategies and Social Policy

“…However, even if things could be set in order, it must be clearly recognized that there can be no market solution to poveny that is not based upon profitsnot just any profits, but a level of profit commensurate with opportunities elsewhere. Business people think in terms of such "opportunity costs" (Harvey, 1937;Wolfson, 1987). Market forces can contribute to overcoming poverty.…”