Regarding doctors and making a profit.
Doctors in Spain get paid to work for the health service, as they do in the UK and anywhere else I know of that has a national health service funded by taxation. Of course they get paid, but that's not commerce: that's having a job.
In Spain, for sure, some docs also have a private practice of their own, but they also work a given amount of time for the state provision. I remember seeing one doctor who dealt with my wife in a private hospìtal also working in the emergency section of the public service when she was taken there in an emergency. There's a cross-over that seems to work.
The problems arise when private companies become embroiled in the provision of state services. Medicines, as in drugs, are another thing altogether, and the cost of those is negotiated most of the time, with the R&D costs etc. proportioned out in various ways via those prices. Problems arise when some new drug comes along and the companies want too high a price for the pubic services' pockets. As result, medication touted as cure for cancer or some other highly emotive ailment is refuses listing as prescribed drug by the public service, and then all hell breaks loose as to why. At which point the wonderful press leaps in and cries foul! and sells even more rubbish on the back of promised exposés, when most of the time all they can expose is the total non-news that drug companies make a bleedin' fortune. Just look at their listings on the stock market if in any doubt: they are money in the bank, pre-collapse bank.
Separation is key, in my opinion, and I can never accept that access to medical assistance should depend on wealth of patient, which any form of private health insurance cannot avoid representing. Of course, if sufficient exclusions and restrictions are built in, then a low-cost insurance becomes of less value than none.
Bit of a mess, really.
Rob