The same thing goes for quality of medical care - when they mess up they get to fix their own mess and charge for it.
For example when our first kid was born, the gynecologist had her trainee pull our son out with their rope thing. She was supposed to apply pressure during the contractions, only she panicked and pulled my son out in one go (she was using her legs to push for force, you can't make this up). The result is that the baby was born quickly and my wife was ripped open. She required urgent surgery to put herself back together, then a month stuck laying in bed and about three months before she was mobile. She still have problems because of it.
The hospital were happy because they could charge three times as much for the corrective surgery than they charged for delivery.
My example was in The Netherlands, where the healthcare costs are well under control and the culture isn't quite so brutally selfish ("free market") as other countries. I can't imagine what it's like living in the US.
In the US, we have medical malpractice lawyers on every street corner. Hospitals absolutely aren't profiting from malpractice.
>A report issued by the US Department of Health and Human Services estimated the cost of malpractice insurance to doctors alone at $6.3 billion in 2002; with an additional cost of $60–108 billion related to the practice of defensive medicine, i.e., costs related to physician behavior in response to the threat of a lawsuit alleging medical negligence
That's an awful story and I'm sorry that happened to your family, and I'm sure you were charged for the additional care.
I'm curious how you know the hospital was "happy" about it though. I ask because a close friend is a nurse/midwife who delivers a lot of babies and I find it very hard to believe that caregivers, at least, would be happy about this outcome. I also find it hard to believe that the hospital administration would reward them for this outcome; indeed, hospital administration usually inclines toward bureaucracy aimed at preventing mistakes, rather than incentives to create mistakes.
Under a single-payer system, new providers would still need to train on the job; mistakes could still happen; and the provision of care to mitigate those mistakes would still cost money. Doctors and nurses don't work for free just because of a mistake, even under a single-payer system. Administrators would still get paid too. In general, medical employees get paid to treat people; that is true regardless of how patient insurance is structured.
I don't think customers should pay extra for medical mistakes; but I also don't think providers in a for-profit healthcare system intentionally and happily create medical mistakes for the purpose of profit.
I'm strongly suspect that the complexity of for-profit health insurance spills into operational complexity. Billing, negotiating for payments, claims denials rework, etc that all spills into hospital management in a significant financial, and focus distracting way.
The same thing goes for quality of medical care - when they mess up they get to fix their own mess and charge for it.
For example when our first kid was born, the gynecologist had her trainee pull our son out with their rope thing. She was supposed to apply pressure during the contractions, only she panicked and pulled my son out in one go (she was using her legs to push for force, you can't make this up). The result is that the baby was born quickly and my wife was ripped open. She required urgent surgery to put herself back together, then a month stuck laying in bed and about three months before she was mobile. She still have problems because of it.
The hospital were happy because they could charge three times as much for the corrective surgery than they charged for delivery.
My example was in The Netherlands, where the healthcare costs are well under control and the culture isn't quite so brutally selfish ("free market") as other countries. I can't imagine what it's like living in the US.