The first reading I read this week was the Greenbay Packers article. While I had heard a few years ago that they were a nonprofit and were owned by stakeholders, I was never quite sure exactly what that meant until now. I really liked the article and it shed some good light on the good that could come from nonprofit sports teams. I especially like one piece of the article, the author writes “in the United States, we socialize the debt of sports and privatize the profits” which is totally true, but something that no one really thinks about, and more than not thinking about it, no one thinks that it can change. It’s nice that Greenbay proved that wrong.
The Mergers of for-profit, non-profit hospitals: Who does it help? article by Jenny Gold was a good introduction into the issues that we will hopefully discuss in class today. I think there is a fine line with this type of stuff, a nonprofit hospital that can’t afford the necessary technology or maintenance is no good, but you also don’t want a for profit hospital that forgets about the minority, lower income populations or the services that may be necessary in lower income, urban communities. It’s hard to say that the for profit company will have the same mission after their guaranteed ten years of charitable services after those ten years are up. This then leaves those without access to healthcare in a bad spot. But then again the healthcare reform stays in the back of my mind and if everyone was required to have healthcare, then this would no longer be an issue… but who knows when or if this will happen, so maybe it’s better to play it safe. The other part of the article that really interested me was the reason that more mergers are happening, and will continue to happen, with nonprofit hospitals and for profit companies. The author writes that the news of health care reform really excited the for profit companies because they could now enter into these sort of mergers because there would be less uninsured individuals coming for services in lower income communities. I think this is really typical for any for profit company. As soon as they see a chance to make more money, they pounce, which could be both good and bad. So after all this mumbo jumbo, what I am trying to say is that I am still confused on what I think is better. I wish there was a way to guarantee the necessary healthcare to all Americans, without the high premiums and lengthy rules… Maybe it’s time to adopt something like Sweden has going on… I’m just saying…
The Value of Nonprofit Healthcare article was also interesting. Healthcare is a crazy important sector in our society, but can be really confusing and I felt that this article was a nice easy read, even if it was an extremely one sided. The first thing that interested me was the part about non profits staying in communities for the long haul, even if profits were down. I think that that is something I have never thought about before. It now makes a little more sense as to why for profits are often built in suburban areas, because they are following the money. I enjoyed the straightforwardness of the author’s interpretations of the missions of nonprofit and for profit healthcare, and to me it makes sense. For profit healthcare systems have to answer to stockholders and owners, while non profits answer to the communities in which they reside. This then determines what services will be provided, and at what cost. I found it interesting in a little more of a negative way that the article didn’t discuss the cons of nonprofit hospitals when it came to technology and maintenance of equipment that we saw in the previous article.
The last article on ADD makes me want to start making pharmaceuticals! Just kidding but how crazy is it that someone can create a mass hysteria and then provide you a pill that will “cure” it… My brother when I was little was actually “diagnosed” with ADD when he was younger and took the pills for a long time, and he is still as crazy and quirky as he was back then! This article also makes you really wonder if pharmaceutical companies could become nonprofit organizations. I know that a lot of research for these meds wouldn’t happen if there wasn’t a pay off in the end, and that would be really bad for diseases that actually needed medication, so this, like for profit and nonprofit mergers are a touchy situation. Maybe then the answer is some sort of government regulation on all things media, like advertising. Maybe the government should provide subsidies for disease and prescription research and then there wouldn’t be such a big dependence on end payouts. I know both of these would be difficult, especially in a capitalist society where we are dependent on new technology and inventions. MAYBE people should just stop being so naïve, take out the trust that we have for the pharmaceutical world, realize that they are in it to make money, and make an informed decision on what they are trying to sell you… And get a doctor that you trust and that is also not naïve and won’t let you take a 6 questions self-diagnostic test and then decide you have issues… JEEZ!
The Non Profit Nation chapter was a good background to all of these articles, but I won’t write really anything about it because this post is already too long! Sorry!
