It's a profit center whether you like it or not, with or without the government. With the government the profit goes into the bureaucracy.

The medicare + medicaid system has shown itself to be an extreme profit center for government employees and the bureaucracy. They take home massive sums in profit: wages and pensions.

The government doesn't make the system more efficient by reducing profit from the equation. They reduce cost by reducing care options, reducing salaries for healthcare workers, and rationing. For example, nurses in America make 50% more than nurses in Germany. Socialized medicine will decimate that pay variance.

http://www.worldsalaries.org/professionalnurse.shtml

There's nothing on earth more wasteful than government when it comes to spending money. Just ask the US government system (fed+state+local), it's a $7 trillion per year profit system, that flows directly into the hands of millions of employees that make on average $100k per year in wages + benefits, with that pay package doubling in size in just the last ten years, while the economy flat lined.