The punchline will be kissinger dying weeks before the law finally catches up with the p'tach.
Theranos Is Subject of Criminal Probe by U.S
181–190 of 226 posts
Re: Theranos Is Subject of Criminal Probe by U.S
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just read a 32 page script and now I want you to write major television shows. Is that your actual job? This is really good.
Thank you! Currently it's a hobby; my background is in tech. This is the second script I've written. The first was a fake premiere for S3 of Silicon Valley ( http://bit.ly/1LOZZpT ).
"Maritime breakfast" -- incredible!
Re: Theranos Is Subject of Criminal Probe by U.S
#183Funny, just saw this in the paper yesterday. I wonder how it differs from Theranos. http://szdaily.sznews.com/html/2016-04/18/content_3505489.ht...
If verified, the LinkedIn history [0] at least shows some expertise and progressive advancement in medical device design and manufacturer, which I don't think Theranos' CEO has.
Re: Theranos Is Subject of Criminal Probe by U.S
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good point. For me it's not exactly schadenfreude. I'm ok with hype that turns out to be justified. And I'm mostly resigned to people who go wrong through an excess of enthusiasm and naivete. But when unjustified hype shades into negligence or fraud, I take a rich pleasure in seeing people get their comeuppance. It's not schadenfreude precisely, but more about seeing justice done, about seeing karma fulfilled.
I don't speak German, but I don't know if it ceases being schadenfreude just because you feel that the bad thing that happens is justified. Indeed, the Wikipedia page on the word freely mixes those kinds of examples in their page. I'm not trying to be confrontational here, but recently I've been having a fairly negative reaction to the happy feelings that occur when justice is served. Sometimes I think this fuels a s…
It might interest you to check out Better Angels of Our Nature, a book by Steven Pinker about the history of violence. He argues that it's typical for humans to fall into cycles of retributive/vengeful violence against one another, or even "Hobbesian trap" patterns of preemptive violence. This leads to astronomically high rates of homicide.
The development of governments that have a monopoly on the use of violence helped curb this. If both sides of a dispute cede their right to violence and entrust a neutral third party with dispensing justice, they can be satisfied with the outcome and save face. For obvious reasons, this leads to a much more civil society than people needing to take the law into their own hands.
In this sense, it's actually a blessing that we're inclined to feel so satisfied seeing justice done by a third party.
Re: Theranos Is Subject of Criminal Probe by U.S
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
healthcare is a very hard problem. While we in the tech community may find it morbidly entertaining to watch Theranos burn to the ground. Someone out there needs to attack healthcare. The not dying motivation is fairly important.
> Someone out there needs to attack healthcare. All the attacking that needs to be done is political/social, not technical. Want to attack healthcare? Strip middlemen out so that the money flows to providers and researchers (Single payer + pouring additional money into the NIH/NSF, with the results being public domain). All of these YC startups I see "hacking" healthcare (Dr Chrono, HealthSherpa, etc) are just bandai…
> If you want to "hack" healthcare and fix the problem, get involved in government and get single payer done.
So we can turn what health technology gets developed into even more of a political game? Building a board of government insiders as opposed to scientists and clinical experts is exactly the kind of move that would work especially well in a single payer system. You want to know what healthcare would look like when governments were the only payors worldwide? Look at defense contracting. Or aerospace. He who had the best lobbyist would win.
If I could change one thing about the commenting on the state of our health care system it would be to require everyone who says "oh we just need single payer" to spend a year working for an insurer, a hospital, and a health technology manufacturer. Then come tell me that changing who pays will fix all problems. Here is a following not-comprehensive list of things that would not be fixed just be going to single payer:
- the US subsidizing all health tech (drug/device) development
- fee-for-service payment structure leading to perverse incentives
- malpractice fears leading to risk-averse, defensive medicine
- poor reimbursement rates yielding waiting lists to be seen by a doctor
- bureaucrats in CMS (the payors) exerting influence on the FDA to not approve new technology because they feel it is too similar to existing technology
- regulators creating vague rules that get applied differently from case to case, making them impossible to plan for
I could go on. I do agree with you that a lot of startups in the space are putting a bandaid on a bleeding jugular. But saying "let's get government more involved" neglects the fact that we're in this problem in part because government is very involved and has been since WWII.
There are three ways you can make healthcare better and cheaper for everyone:
- Make health technology cheaper
- Change the way health care is paid for (I credit Oscar for trying to make it in this space but for various reasons think they're unlikely to succeed)
- Change the way that health care is delivered
There are a number of startups tackling the latter (telemedicine, doctors on demand, drugs delivered to you, etc). Unfortunately the Affordable Care Act has many provisions that make it difficult to innovate in this space, because of the view that it's much easier to control costs when the point-of-care is controlled by a few big hospital systems.
I run a startup that's trying to tackle my first solution: making health tech cheaper by making it easier for startups to get their products through regulators and disrupt incumbents.
But even if we're wildly successful and can start lowering health tech costs across the board, the problem won't be fixed until we fix the payment structure, which will require innovation in payment models, not a one-size-fits-all government plan.
Re: Theranos Is Subject of Criminal Probe by U.S
#186Never trust anyone whose schtick is that they're too busy to have a private life.
Agreed. Did Holmes say that?
There is a number of things from her past interviews (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwKs-eoPM-Y) that leave a lot of questions. For example she says that she sleeps for 4 hours , and that she 's a big fan of the 10000 hours rule, and a bunch of stuff for how she really is committed to what she does, but very little on why she believes she can pull it through. For comparison, another female health entrepreneur, Woljisky of 23andme usually gives much more down-to-earth and concrete motives for her company.
And there is the turtleneck thing that, in retrospect, looks ridiculous.
Re: Theranos Is Subject of Criminal Probe by U.S
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here is a good factual overview of why Single Payer won't make health care cheap in the US: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-04-30/single-paye...
Summary of the article: A single payer system works well everywhere else, but is politically impossible in the US. That is a sad indictment of US politics.
You need a politically strong somewhat lefty government to ram it through against the vested interests who are rich from the present system. Single payer was opposed similarly in the UK but we had a landslide left wing government after WW2 who got it done. A shift in the US towards say Sanders could do it but it doesn't look like that's happening this time around.
Re: Theranos Is Subject of Criminal Probe by U.S
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
That stuff would seem to make it all the more strange. Was she "playing business" and got in over her head? Was it just an outright scam? Some people have said maybe those big name directors were brought in to grease the tracks as part of a deliberate scam. Who knows? Maybe there will be some answers if this probe turns up anything.
I don't think it was intended to be a scam. The founder raised too much capital on the back of massively inflated expectations. They couldn't deliver (didn't one of the technical team commit suicide in despair over this?) and rather than doing the honest thing and returning the capital, they've ended up creating a Kafkaesque web of shadows and lies. The fundamental issue is overfunding, and it is not limited to this…
I tend to agree. From what I've read about her (and not in the puff-pieces at the height of the Theranos hype) she was indeed a much smarter than average young lady - but probably the team was not able to deliver on the original vision/ idea, and rather than admit defeat, they tried to cling on it for as long as possible.
Re: Theranos Is Subject of Criminal Probe by U.S
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Someone out there needs to attack healthcare. All the attacking that needs to be done is political/social, not technical. Want to attack healthcare? Strip middlemen out so that the money flows to providers and researchers (Single payer + pouring additional money into the NIH/NSF, with the results being public domain). All of these YC startups I see "hacking" healthcare (Dr Chrono, HealthSherpa, etc) are just bandai…
Single Payer would be great if you can trust the uh, payer. But our government is delightfully corrupt, so I'm sure a lot of people with more rare medical conditions would end up with worse treatment than they can get now.
In my country, we have a single payer - the NHS - and we also have private insurance which people can buy, or more commonly be given as a perk by their company, on top of that.
Result? Everyone gets generally great healthcare, nobody has to worry about bills if they get in an accident or fall seriously ill, and people who fetishize "great customer service" (mostly shorter wait times for certain things, though they don't have facilities to handle nearly as much as the NHS does) can get what they want too.
Re: Theranos Is Subject of Criminal Probe by U.S
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Someone out there needs to attack healthcare. All the attacking that needs to be done is political/social, not technical. Want to attack healthcare? Strip middlemen out so that the money flows to providers and researchers (Single payer + pouring additional money into the NIH/NSF, with the results being public domain). All of these YC startups I see "hacking" healthcare (Dr Chrono, HealthSherpa, etc) are just bandai…
> If you want to "hack" healthcare and fix the problem, get involved in government and get single payer done. So we can turn what health technology gets developed into even more of a political game? Building a board of government insiders as opposed to scientists and clinical experts is exactly the kind of move that would work especially well in a single payer system. You want to know what healthcare would look like…
...to spend a year working for an insurer, a hospital, and a health technology manufacturer
Living decades in a "single payer" country gives you another outlook: that's a solved problem. You're just doing it wrong. Everybody that has seen it working knows it's wrong and will shrug off whatever ellaborate argumentation you choose.