Do you trust the government to spend money wisely (read efficiently) more than you trust investors?
Profit, while useful in the market, has an upper limit before it can be considered a lack of efficiency, IMO. In some sense, it is the stripping of productive economic value, which is then given to shareholders. It is basically a tax that produces wealth rather than wellbeing.
When shareholders have this money, do they use it wisely in the economy? I don't think that this is an absolute truth. Can the government do better? Yes, if we abandon the conceptual thought that government is always the problem, or by default inefficient, when in fact it can be demonstrated that governments around the world, and here, do many things very well.
> IMO
The thing about finance is that facts trump opinion. No amount of handwaving will untie reward from risk.
Nuclear power. Highways. Satellite communication. The internet itself. These are all products of long-term thinking, not short term profit.
If you want lower taxes there's one thing you can do to cut them by half: Dramatically shrink the US military and stop building new nuclear weapons.
The amount of money put into programs like pharma is a drop in the bucket.
It's silly how much we pay for basic services, but it's OK because the government isn't attached. It's taxes in all but name only, with worse services and less guarantees. Where we pay much more than the wealthy.
Plus it would rid of the monthly premium 'tax', the out of pocket costs, and the giant deductibles. You get all of that money back in your pocket, but have to pay an automatically deducted tax instead. I'm all for it.
So if a hospital doing it is good, why isn’t having the largest insurer plus a huge hospital/care center/doctor group doing it better?