The core philosophical truth of healthcare is you can never have a system that prioritizes care above all. Such is economically intractable. Imagine millions of immortals with artificial heart/lungs (called ECMO, exists for a long time), artificial kidneys (dailysis), etc, costing LOTS Of econonmic resources per day, living for years. The truth of this transcends government. A communist or socialist government still must confront resource allocation.
What we need is something that looks at that efficiency-care-quality tradeoff curve and finds something like the markowitz efficient frontier. Now.. that hospitals operate at such efficiency ought to be a consequent of capitalistic competition even in a for-profit context. The american health system is so crooked and bureaucratic and overpriced, perhaps the most we can do is demand our hospitals be non-profits. Many "non-profit" hospitals seemingly have megabooms in growth, which makes me wonder where the money is coming from to fund the growth, if not profit.
The "prolonged" when used to describe ECMO means days or weeks. Economics are not the problem here, it is currently technologically impossible to provide ECLS for an indefinite period of time without escalating risks of complications, including immediate failure as well as issues that result in death post-decannulation. There have been individual cases where patients were put on such treatments for months and have survived, but it is in fact medically extremely risky and should not be done unless there was absolutely no other choice. "Immortality" through such a means is almost certainly going to kill you within years.
Quality of life while undergoing treatment is also entirely non-existent, trust me, you to not want to be "immortal" if it required indefinite ECMO. Unless you enjoy living in hospitals I guess.
Prioritizing care does not mean everyone lives forever. Hospitals do not have a magic wand to wave.
Equally it does not mean unlimited resources. Clearly we live in a real world, and Healthcare will always be resource constrained to some degree.
Those who allocate resources still decide priorities, and clearly health becomes balanced with education, justice, military and so on.
So perhaps in deciding between for-profit and non-profit it's really a decision between who gets to allocate the resources. Do we prefer people out to squeeze every last dime out of you, or people looking to get re-elected by their constituents?
What we need is something that looks at that efficiency-care-quality tradeoff curve and finds something like the markowitz efficient frontier. Now.. that hospitals operate at such efficiency ought to be a consequent of capitalistic competition even in a for-profit context. The american health system is so crooked and bureaucratic and overpriced, perhaps the most we can do is demand our hospitals be non-profits. Many "non-profit" hospitals seemingly have megabooms in growth, which makes me wonder where the money is coming from to fund the growth, if not profit.