Haven, the Amazon-Berkshire-JPMorgan Venture To Disrupt Healthcare, is Disbanding After 3 Years (cnbc.com) 163
Haven, the joint venture formed by three of America's most powerful companies to lower costs and improve outcomes in health care, is disbanding after three years, CNBC has learned exclusively. From a report: The company began informing employees Monday that it will shut down by the end of next month, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. Many of the Boston-based firm's 57 workers are expected to be placed at Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway or JPMorgan Chase as the firms each individually push forward in their efforts, and the three companies are still expected to collaborate informally on healthcare projects, the people said. The announcement three years ago that the CEOs of Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase had teamed up to tackle one of the biggest problems facing corporate America -- high and rising costs for employee health care -- sent shock waves throughout the world of medicine. Shares of healthcare companies tumbled on fears about how the combined might of leaders in technology and finance could wring costs out of the system. Brooke Thurston, a spokeswoman for Haven, confirmed the company's plans to close.
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Not at all. The issue is the CEO departed, and all three companies were implementing ideas from Haven independently. I really find this to be a huge disappointment; we need ideas to dramatically overhaul healthcare in the US, and this was by far one of the best shots for making it happen. I don’t know what special sauce they needed to make it work, if they needed more strategic partners or to buy up one of the incumbents, but it is a shame to see the collaboration dissolve.
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I do NOT want the US government (federal or state) to be in charge of my health care.
I'm open to other ideas, but not that one.
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So anything but the proven solution? That sounds a lot like someone who doesn't want success.
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The thing is, myself and many others are perfectly happy with the coverage and money we have to pay for it.
Yes, it sucks for others, but what I have is great and reasonably priced.
I would actually take a hit on the level of care and out of pocket costs to me and my options would be limited if we went to government insurance.
Sure it would benefit some...but at the cost to what I am happy with now.
Now....explain
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Yes and no. The savings is invisible because the average of death from covid is the same as the average age of death and because the number of people who reach that age each year is skyrocketing as the boomers are starting to reach those upper age ranges.
Re:Duh! (Score:5, Interesting)
Short answer is nobody is really sure.
2020 was a very good year for anyone on the Insurance side of the healthcare biz. People generally consumed a lot less care. AS COVID-19 hit the population of the segment most likely to be covered by medicare in terms of age - and medicade in terms of those 'essential' front line workers in terms of economic class.
For the smaller providers its meant business was lean and the results have been kinda mixed for the hospital systems. They have made a money on covid care, but they have faced a lot of expenses as well and various restrictions have cut into high margin outpatient stuff.
Right now the big insurers and hospital systems alike have their actuaries and planning people frantically trying to determine what part all that care that did not happen is simply deferred and will be seen as increased consumption in the near future, was perhaps never actually needed, will result in more costly intervention ahead, would have been for people no longer with us due to covid-19. etc. My understanding is there is actually a lot of uncertainty right now. (I have lot family in the insurance business).
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callous.
i have no problem watching you die from some illness that a has a common cure
US already has an answer to this (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you don't know, the answer is because people hate Medicaid, so the people pushing for a "universal" plan try to sell it as Medicare for everyone (because Medicare test well in focus groups of people under 65), when it would in effect be Medicaid for everyone.
Tell people that you're going to replace their health insurance with Medicaid and they'll te
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What people are these? At least 3 in my family would be dead if medicaid wasn't a thing. Its not ideal, but when your options are "you can get insulin from this one place" or "you can drop dead because we live in a country where we let you die because you aren't rich", its a pretty solid deal.
People like us, we don't care wtf they call it, we're just happy our diabetic family members are still
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Most people hate medicaid because of all the crazy hoops you have to jump through to prove need after decades of monkey wrenching by congress critters that want it to die. That all goes away when your citizenship is the only valid criterion.
In that way, a universal healthcare would be more like medicare where you don't have to continuously prove and defend your eligibility (since once you're 65, there's no chance you will end up being 42 later).
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You know Medicare is a program specifically for people over 65, right? Why expand that instead of the existing program for people of any age - Medicaid?
Because Medicare is managed by the federal government, and Medicaid is managed by the states. When you're proposing a federal program, you're going to name it after the federal program.
As for hatred of Medicaid, that depends greatly on the state. Some states do their best to fuck over the poor, and since they manage Medicaid in their state, they fuck over Medicaid in their state.
Same reason Republicans and neoliberals in Congress have been cutting the VA's budget despite starting two wars, and Conservativ
Re: US already has an answer to this (Score:5, Informative)
Fortunately, I had insurance and ended up "only" paying $9,000 out of pocket. That's still too much, IMHO, for what should be a first-world healthcare system.
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Re: US already has an answer to this (Score:5, Informative)
Actually the docs are getting screwed (Score:2)
A handful of specialized surgeons make a ton of money. Everybody else is barely middle c
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So, you'd be cutting the budget for a core function of the Federal government and expecting that to magically change what States do?
Well large scale federal cut backs are a great place to start. Our federal government has a pretty narrow list of specific constitutional functions its supposed to be performing. If the feds spend less they can tax less, and the states can tax more and do more. A good test for when the system is fixed IMHO is when the typical tax payer has a higher state than federal tax bill. That is goal conservatives should be working toward.
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The VAST majority of the US Federal spending, is on the safety net programs...Medicare/Medicaid and SS...military spending comes in 3rd.
Add on interest to the debt and well, not much room to work with there as that no one is going to threaten M/M or SS....
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I don't that's true, just addressing "who pays" doesn't tackle the fact that an outlandish percentage of our GDP goes to healthcare. It can't be swept under the rug. We need cost savings, not just redistribution.
I think the fundamental problem is a refusal to rationalize, or "ration" if you will, healthcare. If you do really expensive stuff without even considering cost/benefit - this is the outcome.
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Not to mention another ~$9000/year for insurance.
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tl;dr: the Federal Reserve has on two occasions in the past 12 years suddenly injected trillions into the economy without hyperinflation. For details see below.
-- -- -- -- -- --
Quick background: when the central bank of the US (the Federal Reserve) expands its balance sheet, it is simply printing money to do so (see last heading "Special Considerations") [investopedia.com] (it may or may not make a profit on the debt it owns but that is incremental growth, not the sudden, large increases of its balance sheet).
Take a look at t [federalreserve.gov]
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I think it worth identifying how we are different than Zimbabwe and how we are alike.
First we are still the 'worlds reserve currency' so provided those massive injections remain mostly domestic most other currencies being ultimately dollar backed are equally weakened as the reserves of the foreign issuers are devalued. So there is comparative less arbitrage opportunity and hence no capital flight.
additionally almost all that injected money has been sweept into inflated asset prices and fortunately not into
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Not really, no. If we re-direct about half of health insurance premiums already being paid annually to universal healthcare and refund the other half back to the payer, it'll be covered.
Yes, the healthcare market in the U.S. *IS* that broken.
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"I'm trying to figure out a way to not pay for Medicare when I retire. I've spent decades pouring tens of thousands, perhaps over one hundred thousand, dollars down the drain. All that money is lost to me and I will never get it back.
But once I'm retired, I'm expected to pour tens of thousands more dollars into another black hole, money I again will never get back or be able to use.
Screw that. It's my money, I should be able to do with it what I want and not be forced to hand it over for no reason."
Assuming
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Assuming a solvent medicare for all (really, it should be medicaid+medicare, no co-pays) where would the black hole be?
It's not about solvency, it's about me paying for something I don't use. Even worse, if on the one in a million chance I do need to use it, I have to hand over more money to pay for something I've already paid for. And what happened to the tens of thousands I've already handed over? Why can't that be used at some future date?
If we're going down this route of forcing people to hand over t
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one in a million chance I do need to use it
I think you severely underestimate your current and future medical needs.
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Sounds like you need universal single payer healthcare. It may not perfectly balance the books, but you wouldn't end up having to pay more money after you already paid.
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It's not about solvency, it's about me paying for something I don't use
So....do you not understand the concept of insurance at all?
Your homeowners insurance premiums didn't get saved up for you. They were paid out to the guy whose house burned down. Same with car insurance - those went to the people who had accidents when you didn't. Same with every other insurance, including health insurance.
Even worse, if on the one in a million chance I do need to use it, I have to hand over more money to pay for something I've already paid for.
There is a 100% chance you will use Medicare once you're over 65. Even if it's just for a doctor to declare your body dead, they'll be billing Medicare.
so on the off chance you do need to have some major surgery when you're 80
Major medical treatment after 6
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I think that they should pass a law to accommodate people like you.
You could choose to opt out of insurance, but you'd have to get a tattoo on your wrist indicating your choice.
That way, if at any point in your life you ever show up at a hospital without full advance cash payment in hand, they'll know that they can just wheel you out to the curb and dump you there.
Also, any charity that offers to help you out of your plight would lose their tax-exempt status. "Self sufficient" people like you shouldn't be f
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You could choose to opt out of insurance, but you'd have to get a tattoo on your wrist indicating your choice.
That way, if at any point in your life you ever show up at a hospital without full advance cash payment in hand, they'll know that they can just wheel you out to the curb and dump you there.
Every time I have said something similar, people come back and say, "But you can't do that! That would wreck the system if everyone did that. Who would pay the medical bills for the obese, the alcoholics, the d
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Every time I have said something similar, people come back and say, "But you can't do that! That would wreck the system if everyone did that. Who would pay the medical bills for the obese, the alcoholics, the drug users?"
No, it wouldn't wreck the system, because there are very few people as foolish and shortsighted as yourself.
It would probably be good for the overall system, because it would be a way to shut up incessant whiners. We could just tell them "If you don't like it, get the tattoo."
Only a tiny percentage would actually go ahead and risk being bankrupted or killed by a curable disease or accident. Many more would at least think about how and why insurance works and stop their silly complaints.
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Who would pay the medical bills for the obese, the alcoholics, the drug users?
The firefighters with lung disease, the oil workers with arthritis, the farmer with high blood pressure, etc. In other words, the many people who spent a lifetime busting their ass and other body parts helping to maintain a high quality of life for all.
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All that money is lost to me and I will never get it back.
All that money went to pay for the medical care of people older than you.
You never had your own "Medicare" account. Nor Social Security account. Money you paid went to older people, and people younger than you will be paying for your Medicare and Social Security.
That one half of our political spectrum has been deliberately lying to you about how Medicare and Social Security work so that you now believe their bullshit doesn't actually change how those systems work.
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"Private health insurance subsidizes Medicare and Medicaid. Reimbursements from the two federal programs is something like half of what private insurers are billed and some physicians don't take Medicaid or Medicare."
Thanks for mentioning both. Medicare for all would be a disaster if it wasn't really the combined benefits of medicaid and medicare. Medicare is just bad insurance and still has out of pocket costs, also it would need to cover dental, chiropractic, and eye care. If we are going to do healthcare
I'm not surprised it's shutting down (Score:5, Insightful)
The only way to get healthcare costs under control is the way every single country on earth does it: Single Payer / Single Insurer. There's just too much money in keeping people alive and not in pain otherwise.
Regular market forces don't function as a result. I can't shop around for a heart transplant because I don't have the expertise to really know for certain who's going to do the best job, I don't have the pharmaceutical knowledge to pick my own drugs, etc, etc. And even if I did a lot of medical procedures are so uncommon it's not like I can make a wrong choice and go somewhere's else next time. If I don't like a restaurant I can pick another one next week. If I don't like my heart transplant I'm kinda stuck with it and I'm probably not gonna get another.
Re:I'm not surprised it's shutting down (Score:4)
The only way to get healthcare costs under control is the way every single country on earth does it: Single Payer / Single Insurer.
The intractable with Single Payer Insurance . . . is that everyone wants to receive it . . . but nobody wants to be the Single Payer.
Even the "Medicaide / Medicare for All!" crew have to be honest and admit that it will on average cost most folks more.
So it basically comes down to a personal moral question if you are willing to pay more to help people who are not as well off as yourself.
In the US right now, the answer is "No!"
If that answer ever changes to "Yes!" . . . you will get "Universal Medicaide / Medicare For All."
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Re:I'm not surprised it's shutting down (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a lie that prices have to stay where they are or increase. Inelastic demand is the number one driver of health care costs in our system. And inelastic demand can only really be dealt with by pooling demand into a large aggregates where they gain bargaining power. And pools limited to the population of a single US state don't cut it. The most leverage will be created by grouping all of the US into one pool. AKA single payer.
Aggregate demand sufficiently, and we'll see costs come down dramatically, reducing insurance premiums, and allowing coverage to be expanded dramatically for the same amount of money.
My last MRI cost over $10k here. In Canada, the same exact procedure, using the same exact machine would cost $900.00.
It's INELASTIC DEMAND.
If you don't understand what that is, you were probably snoozing in high school economics, or perhaps the public education system just failed you. Either way, here's a wikipedia article explaining it. [wikipedia.org]
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No, it won't cost more. Don't forget that once it's implemented, you will no longer have to pay private health insurance premiums. Considering that in the U.S. we spend more than double the amount per-capita for our 21st rate health care, people can expect to pay less once we fix it properly (like the rest of the world has).
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The only way to get healthcare costs under control is the way every single country on earth does it: Single Payer / Single Insurer.
The intractable with Single Payer Insurance . . . is that everyone wants to receive it . . . but nobody wants to be the Single Payer.
This is just rich people talking. The overwhelming majority of Americans would never pay more in taxes than they currently pay for the health care they could barely afford. I'd love to pay an additional 5% of my paycheck in taxes as I pay around 12.5% of my income for health insurance premiums for my family. That's not even going into the damn deductibles, that's just premiums, and that's not covering dental or anything else. And I'm right smack in the middle of the middle class, in fact I'm going to get b
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Instead of going even further down the policy road that has lead us to this point, how about rolling policies back to where they were before consumer and healthcare inflation began to diverge and try something different?
I'm going to say this as plainly as I can. Liberal proposals for universal/single payer health
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There is a locked door m,arked 21A. There is a key on a little table next to the door. The key is marked 21A. You would suggest we try a fire axe, kicking the door, hiring a locksmith, getting a saw, attempting teleportation, etc. Anything but using that key sitting right there. How ever will we get through that door, I wonder? We may never find a solution! Perhaps we can beat it down with our skulls?
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You act as if healthcare is a capitalist market in the first place, when in fact it is very possibly the most regulated, government managed industry in existence.
I don't disagree with you that our current system is a fucking mess, a system where people want it to be capitalist at the top end, but socialist for everyone. That's untenable.
Personally, I *don't* agree with you that market forces aren't capable of working this out. I do rather suspect that our society of clueless sheep in 2021 is incapable of
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Not to mention, if you're in the process of dying, there's no time to get on the web and comparison shop.
Re:I'm not surprised it's shutting down (Score:5, Insightful)
You are making up objections that aren't true, plenty of first world countries do it. Meanwhile, the USA healthcare costs are four times theirs. The USA is ranked #27 and falling, used to be #21, used to be #1.
You are shilling for a system that is failing and growing worse
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It's been on it's way down since the '70s at least. That was not because of government, it's because of lack of government.
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Most of those fuck ups in the U.S. are because of monkey wrenching.
Socialized medicine seems to work well elsewhere, are you claiming that Americans are too stupid to make it work? That we're just especially incompetent?
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Are you young? It's been failing long before Obamacare, going down the shitter since 1980s
https://www.advisory.com/en/da... [advisory.com]
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Better outcome at a fifth of the cost?
HELL
THE
FUCK
NO!
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So you WANT to pay more for less?
If that's what you really want, accept universal healthcare and throw a stack of hundreds in the trash on your way out of the doctor's office.
Re:I'm not surprised it's shutting down (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be interesting to understand why people like you believe the things they do. In all countries with socialized medicine there are options for supplemental care that are still more reasonable than US costs. You can also go to another country as a medical tourist if you are really in a pinch— the cash price will often be in line with what you would pay out of pocket in the US today.
There are a lot of options out there, but the current system of so many layers of non-contributing players (middlemen) and profiteers is what drives up the costs. In very few circumstances does it actually provide better outcomes.
Re:I'm not surprised it's shutting down (Score:4, Interesting)
It would be interesting to understand why people like you believe the things they do.
I'm guessing based on some family members who are big fans of Fox News, Bill O'Reilly, and similar. They frequently tout the following: do you know bad government is, and do you really want a government controlling your health care? How will prices go down without free market competition? Medicare doesn't work and is insolvent, how will the country survive if that's all there is? and so on...I hear that constantly from my family. Fox News is popular, I think maybe even the most popular news source in the country, and lots of people now pick up that view they so often convey. Years of "Socialism is Bad!" messaging along with outright wrong information on the actual pros and cons of other countries systems have made health care basically impossible to solve in the US.
Re: I'm not surprised it's shutting down (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you describing the current system? Because most people's choice of a HC provider is limited to their choice of employer. The rest doesn't need explanation.
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I love how everybody pretends we couldn't have competing non-profit insurers/providers and pay the cost out of the fed tap so the cost is automatically fairly distributed by everyone benefiting from our economy dollar-per-dollar.
There are other choices than marrying capitalist greed with a near limitless government spending tap.
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At least under a Capitalist system, greed tends to be focused on things and wealth, and is subject to a number of restraints, including the greed of others. Under Feudal or Socialist (inc. Communist and Fascist) systems, the only outlet for greed is the acquisition of power over others.
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These things were not always true. It is worth noting that they only became true after political attempts to improve quality or restrain costs.
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Except for the little fact that no single payer system in the world spends as much per capita on healthcare as we do in the U.S. The U.S. is not even in the top 10 for health outcomes, so don't even attempt to claim we spend more and get more, we do not get more or better.
Re: I'm not surprised it's shutting down (Score:3)
Having seen UKs, India's, and USs systems, I can tell you that the US wait times are longer than the UK. India's is shorter than both but only because most middle class Western nationals have access to the "rich" paths.
The only spot that the US beats the rest in wait times is when you are dying. At that point the ER system drops everything and focuses on you.
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Yet I have a bunch for family that are American expats living in London for the last 10 years or so and never have I heard them say one nice thing about healthcare there when asked them to compare it with what they had in Durham, NC.
Re: I'm not surprised it's shutting down (Score:4, Interesting)
Quit making up lies about wait lists. There are huge wait times for basic services here. Just try changing jobs, and getting a new health provider. Every physician within twenty miles of me was "not taking new patients" last time I changed providers. Also worth noting the UK and Canada both have very different health care systems. There is no NHS in Canada, every provider is a private practice. But you wouldn't know anything about that, would you? Because you are just parroting back propaganda.
And don't try to say Trump's disaster of a Covid policy is "socialism." It's Trumpism. Of course, you then go on to complain about the free market letting the rich jump the line.
Why don't you look at wait times in France where doctors only get $80k per year on average. Why is there no doctor shortage there? Oh yeah, because they don't have governments owned by the rich and dedicated to fucking up every attempt to reign in obscene profit taking.
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Some difference comes down to differences in measuring wait times. America measures by average, Canada by mean, which is IMHO more accurate. Because in America, the average may lower, when you count all the rich folks who go to wealthier private hospitals. Compare that to the wait times in an inner city hospital, you'll see, a lot of Americans have to wait a long, long time for care. Some literally wait the rest of their lives, if they have no insurance.
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A mean is an average, one of three types.
Did you mean the median or the mode in your comment (which one)?
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Median. Median wait time (i.e. half of people wait longer than this) is a more accurate measure than average wait time.
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Why don't you look at wait times in France where doctors only get $80k per year on average. Why is there no doctor shortage there?
They have designed policies the effectively implement a brain drain for India and the middle east. I mean it, that is the reasons the capable want to leave the shit holes they came from and its easier to immigrate to the EU than USA for them.
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Huh, interesting. Just had to go and look up what the average doctor's salary is in India. It's about $13k!!! People here make more flipping burgers...
So I guess the lesson here is, if college is free, then doctors don't have to overcharge for their services. And you still get plenty of doctors. Funny old thing, India and France both have better health care systems than the US. Weird how when everything isn't a cut-throat capitalist hell-scape, society just works better.
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Yeah, I hear you on that one. I'd love to visit the country someday but my wife absolutely refuses, citing the fact that they poop in the rivers...
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Why don't you look at wait times in France where doctors only get $80k per year on average. Why is there no doctor shortage there?
Apparently there is a doctor shortage in France [france24.com].
Re: I'm not surprised it's shutting down (Score:4, Informative)
Do you even read the stories you link? "French medical staff say market-based policies by successive governments have hurt patient care."
Staff are striking because of conditions caused by market based "solutions" not because of low pay. FFS, read the article before you post.
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You said there wasn't a doctor shortage in France. Clearly there is. Get your facts straight.
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No, there's not. They are striking because of the free market reforms imposed on them, so they have a temporary shortage. And you know, there's that pesky pandemic. Read the article.
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There is a doctor shortage in France. We can even be more granular and say which regions of France have a doctor shortage. Are you the kind of person who learns, or do you ignore facts and remain mistaken?
Admit you were wrong. Come to the light side, and be right again.
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Don't be a pedantic fuckwit. Doctors striking is temporary, not a shortage. There are plenty of doctors, the are just on strike. Because of market based reforms, not socialism.
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If you're having trouble making an appointment with your GP, I can only tell you to look for a new one. I've never had a problem getting a timely (under 2 days) appointment, no matter my in
Healthcare, bio/life sciences is HARD (Score:5, Insightful)
I have spent my whole career in healthcare and the life sciences, but in a technical capacity. My background is in AI/Machine Learning/big data/etc., and I have worked in diagnostics, devices, drug development.
It has been really interesting and cool. The field is ripe with opportunities, and fascinating intellectual challenges.
But guess what, it is also very very complex, for a gajillion reasons. First of all, biology is hard. And people who are experts in this area are routinely surprised and wrong. Then the actual system of delivering healthcare has a lot of issues. Then you have regulatory things to consider, and laws like HIPAA.
Despite what people think, very few people are out there to screw others over. Sure people like to make money like in any industry, and there are bad actors (FU Martin Shkreli), but they are a very small fraction of all the people who work here. There are underlying reasons and systemic trends which have led us to where we are, and no one would have designed things this way from scratch, but also does not mean that it was all put together this way to screw over people. One common phrase I have heard from people throughout my career is that we are all patients; those who work in this area also get sick, suffer from diseases and need care throughout their lives.
It has been funny and amusing though how people not in this area do not get it. Especially those coming from a tech background who have disrupted other areas and now are going to disrupt this field.
Things just do not translate. Take my field of ML/AI. Algorithms, models in other domains do not need the same level of rigor. Train, and test and repeat. Deploy a model to show ads. It kinda works, that is OK. Do not have to submit to the FDA. Do not have to be careful with small amounts of data (you know how rare it is to get patient level data, especially from bio-specimens like blood, tissue, etc, and then have longitudinal follow up with it).
People may have initial POC wins, Googles recent work with breast cancer as an example. But scaling it, working with real world issues, variability, etc, things just fall apart.
Googles Verily venture has been around for a long time, and nothing real has come out of it.
IBM Watsons failure in healthcare is well known and documented.
Now Haven has failed.
I have seen it from the other end. Doctors, biologists who do not get tech think oh Google and Facebook are so big and smart, so if they work in this area, they will succeed. Big tech thinks oh we have done well in other fields, we can win this one too.
As someone who straddles both, I shake my head so many times. I constantly have recruiters reaching out. 90% of the time, I pass on any opportunity. The people involved just do not get it. I used to have FOMO, but after years, when I follow back up on things I declined, I usually was right. Only thing I have some regrets about is Flatiron, but lets see if Roche can really make that work. And even there, it was the right decision for me, their ML/AI stuff is pretty weak, their value was just in their datasets. And I think it was overinflated value, but that is a different post.
Anyway, the TLDR version is that Big Tech and people who are successful in other domains have a lot of hubris that we kicked butt here, we can do so there. And pretty much every time they fail in healthcare. And vice a versa, people in healthcare who do not get tech also fail when they try to do tech stuff. There is a small subgroup of capable folks who manage to succeed in the middle.
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I have spent my whole career in healthcare and the life sciences, but in a technical capacity.
Not a lifetime, but I've dipped in and out over the years.
It has been funny and amusing though how people not in this area do not get it. Especially those coming from a tech background who have disrupted other areas and now are going to disrupt this field.
Yep. It's so wildly ludicrously complex but people who only know algorithms and think they're pretty smart always grossly underestimate the complexity.
https://xk [xkcd.com]
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You might have blinders on. We do work for a number of healthcare providers, and it is pretty clear from the ground up what causes prices to be what they are. Replacing a MRI in a hospital might be a $5 million project— $1 million for the medical equipment, $500k for the hard construction costs, $30k for direct architecture and engineering... and the rest is all project overhead. There are so many crazy layers of overhead it is insane. The irony is that the projects are all templated already; the on
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To be fair, Haven wasn't trying to solve any of the biological problems of health care. They were trying to solve the billing problems of health care, which is a lot closer to the member companies' bailiwick.
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This guy gets it.
I'm a physician but have worked in clinical informatics for the last 5-10 years and even work with some AI / machine learning gurus like you. The system is insanely complicated. I'm constantly learning new things after 20+ years in health care.
I share your feelings on the matter. I'm frequently amused by how easy some people outside the field think it is. The politics of it all is grossly oversimplified. The tech pieces also grossly oversimplified. Even people within health care have
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First of all, biology is hard.
This.
I also work in biology, with an engineering background. One of the big culture shocks for me was the correlation-is-not-causation mantra in biology. There's a good reason for it: Biology is messy, as I'm fond of saying.
In engineering, we hear and say "correlation is not causation", but we know in our heart-of-hearts that 98% of the time, correlation is in fact causation because, well, it's engineering, and we understand most of it exceedingly well. If we didn't, it wouldn't be called engineering. So
Totally corrupt (Score:3)
US healthcare system is totally corrupt. Prices are 3 to 10 times other developed countries. Lots of people don't have coverage. Even those who do end up paying outrageous amounts.
(My wife just had her annual physical. Simple exam. No lab. No health problems. Bill was over $1000.)
Doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, pharma, device makers are all complicit in the scam.
Regarding this "partnership". I think Amazon was probably looking to lower their costs as well as make some money off the system. Berkshire and JPMorgan were probably just looking at ways to capture profits.
Only way to fix this is for government to dictate prices and services just like all other developed countries.
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Re: Totally corrupt (Score:2)
I guess you haven't figured out that it's the capitalists screwing you. The government is your only protection.
the biggest problem of the US (Score:2)
The biggest problem Americans facing is not China but its own healthcare monopoly -- in particular the monopolies of the healthcare providers. It's a supply side problem. Trying to squeeze the insurance providers is a waste of time and effort. Why? Because healthcare works are primarily labor- and knowledge-intensive high-liability customer servicing dealing with dirty, sick and often insane people. And then the nurse unions and medical professional associations jump in to further restrict supplies through
Dodged that one... (Score:2)
I had zero confidence in this "collaboration". I say this because I have some firsthand experience, having interviewed for a position. Without going into specifics, I had some serious concerns about the management of the company, and really about a lack of vision for the "how" this was going to be successful. Build a digital platform and... magic? I've seen that pattern in quite a few startups from my career, and none of those survived either. It doesn't matter how much money you have, if you're not th
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That's called a sign of regulatory capture (Score:2)
What this tells me is that literally no amount of money or resources can solve the problem unless you're an established player. That usually means something or somebody has put up a wall to keep others out of their little playground. Fuck them.
I don't like the notion of single payer, but I'm really liking a rollback to 1970s rules and a ban on for-profit health insurance. Make health insurance nonprofit entities only, put proportional limits on administrative and non-direct safety compliance expenditures
also fix billing / networks so that the end user (Score:2)
also fix billing / networks so that the end user does not get stuck with the bill if some makes an error and make network rules easy for people + ER IS IN NETWORK AT ALL TIMES FOR ANY SERVICE.
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Yeah, the Federal Government. In the 60's, it took steps to make sure healthcare would be affordable for the poor and elderly. Costs increased. In the 70's steps were taken to combat that. Result - costs increased. In the 80's more steps were taken to make it affordable, and to "improve quality". By that time healthcare inflation was totally detached from consumer inflation.
Pick any change to he
for profit healthcare needs to be cut down (Score:2)
for profit healthcare needs to be cut down the usa is the only real place where this is an big thing and covid may force people to take what they get even if it's out of network.
Pretty much same for Whole Foods "disruption" (Score:3)
...sent shock waves throughout the world of medicine
I was actually thinking about this over the past week, on how we've not heard about the 'disruption' of this Amazon healthcare thing since the original announcement. It also reminded me how the Whole Foods purchase also didn't seem to "disrupt" much.
Aren't they a bit short-sighted? (Score:2)
Have they even tried 3D-printing healthcare?
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Healthcare = INELASTIC DEMAND (Score:5, Interesting)
How much would you pay to not lose your eyesight? To walk again? To not die?
Sorry, but Capitalism, which relies on elasticity of demand to control pricing, just won't work. We end up with all the power on the provider side. And from an ethical perspective, we really would like to avoid the situation where the decision as to whether someone lives or dies is left to profit motive. Make no mistake, with a finite set of resources, some people will always be left to die where they might otherwise live due to expense. We will always have "death panels" with any system. But how that decision is made shouldn't come down to greed.
Thankfully, we have another tool on our economic workbench: Socialism.
As far as a means of leveling the playing field in the face of inelastic demand, it excels by aggregating demand into, ideally, a single entity to leverage pricing back down to reasonable levels. As Socialism is the economic arm of Egalitarianism, we will also have a much more equitable means of allocating resources, and deciding who gets what.
One of the main weaknesses of Socialism is that it lacks the institutions of competition and the profit motive. This will negatively impact our ability to develop new procedures, drugs, etc, if left to a purely Socialist system. A hybrid solution would seem to be the best approach, with the addition bonuses and subsidies to free market ventures to help ensure that the pace of innovation continues uninterrupted. Think a Chinese form of State Capitalism confined to only the market of non-elective health care.
It's really no surprise that the venture in the OP failed, given the conditions that I've listed, as well as the byzantine labyrinth of federal and state rules and regulations, largely crafted by the health care industry to protect their own bottom line. It's not something that's well understood by the general populace. Inelastic demand is never included in discussions on healthcare on MSM or elsewhere. People are usually misguided or misinformed on the real issues facing our system, assuming that other, less systemic problems are to blame. It's not malpractice suits, nor other forms of liability. While these are expenses that do increase the cost of doing business for practitioners, they're not the reason we're seeing such stratospheric pricing. It's inelastic demand and the inappropriate application of Capitalism to a market where it can not function. And until that's universally understood, we'll remain in our current quagmire.