You can see the role of profit in medicine with this change. What's interesting is that the new dialysis centers are springing up on El Camino Real in prime retail land. One is already built, the Satellite Health Center on El Camino near the Phyllis/Calderon intersection, on the Phyllis side. Another is planned just across the street on the site of the former Foster's Freeze and Used Car dealership.

I am at a loss to see how this is supposed to fit in with the idea of increased density along El Camino Real. Won't it cost these centers a lot more rent to use such land for this purpose?

Yup Profit in Medicine, I agree with you.

The idiocy that profit motive improves solutions for public health needs is patently idiotic. Greed replacing not for profit services never works in any venue.

Look what has happened in any other example of this madness.

If a service cannot financially support itself, I am curious how you two would suggest it be sustained? Are you going to pay for it?

If a hospital does not have any focus on financial self-sustainability, it leads to dependency on government and poor service. If you disagree with me on that, just look at the VA as a prime example.

There is nothing wrong with this change. If there are dialysis centers springing up all over as you claim, what is the issue? It is spawning new business opportunities and jobs. There is no issue.

The issue is that somehow these private for profit clinics that do dialysis can either cut costs or charge more than El Camino did for the same service. Since their rental costs will be much higher, they must have found a way to work the system and to then charge more for that. On the other hand, it could be that El Camino was loading these services with overhead costs which they will still incur even when they do not perform the service. It's all an accounting shell game.

Why not prevent 90% of kidney failure instead? It's been possible since 2002, when I published how. [Portion removed; don't promote websites for for-profit ventures.] Why you haven't heard yet that dialysis is obsolete might have something to do with its profitability: each dialysis patient brings in $100K a year for the 2-3 years they're alive. That money comes from Medicare, i.e. it comes from us taxpayers. So Americans get to keep on paying for dialysis with our lives and our treasure. Sound familiar?

"Pulls the plug on Dialysis..." was a tacky, not to mention tasteless lead-in.