Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GoFundMe CEO: ‘Gigantic Gaps’ in Health System Showing Up in Crowdfunding

khn.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 291 posts

Re: GoFundMe CEO: ‘Gigantic Gaps’ in Health System Showing Up in Crowdfunding

#91

Post by toomuchtodo »

conanbatt wrote: post #90
thanatos_dem wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We all do! Something something single payer. Edit: not sure why the downvotes, that’s the reality of things. If you want a more fully fleshed out thought, here you go: We would all contribute to the payment of expensive operations via taxes in a single payer system. In the current system we have insurance payments. It’s effectively the same, paying a small fee regularly, to subsidize the costs for expensive procedure…

> We would all contribute to the payment of expensive operations via taxes in a single payer system. That's just insurance, managed by the state. > But with single payer, we cut out companies in the middle pulling a heafty profit Oh boy. Lets say I concede, for the sake of argument, that government can run a private business with the same efficiency, and that the profits it would make as private are given back to its…

I’d still prefer the state over private insurance companies (Medicare is well run and popular).

As Steve Jobs said about Dropbox, you’re a feature (insurance companies) not a product.

Re: GoFundMe CEO: ‘Gigantic Gaps’ in Health System Showing Up in Crowdfunding

#92

Post by conanbatt »

rosser wrote: post #81
conanbatt wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has substantial incoming medical tourism. If it really were strictly worse to european alternatives (more expensive or lower quality) europeans would not go to the US.

> if it were strictly worse... Ohai goalpost. When did you get there ? The existence of .eu-to-.us medical tourism is utterly orthogonal to the availability of research in those countries. If you honestly took ten minutes to try, you'd be able to find dozens, if not hundreds of trials in every .eu member state, plenty of which are at least comparable to, if not more advanced than what's available in the US. I could g…

It means there are things the US healthcare provides that universals systems don't, and in a practical way that affects people, not purely in the world of ideas.

The great folly of the world universal is that it implies everything would be available, and its a step in the opposite direction: a set of things will be made available, and the things that aren't will be delivered by the private market. Private care is still a thing in most universal care countries. And even with private and public, us still produces something for people that could get free treatment.

Re: GoFundMe CEO: ‘Gigantic Gaps’ in Health System Showing Up in Crowdfunding

#93

Post by conanbatt »

DanBC wrote: post #75
conanbatt wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has substantial incoming medical tourism. If it really were strictly worse to european alternatives (more expensive or lower quality) europeans would not go to the US.

That doesn't mean those tourists are getting effective or even safe treatment. It just means the US hospitals are good at marketing to desperate and wealthy people.

The funny paradox of argumenting people are stupid is that inevitably you will be put in the same category.

Re: GoFundMe CEO: ‘Gigantic Gaps’ in Health System Showing Up in Crowdfunding

#94

Post by Simon_says »

Brendinooo wrote: post #31

>Or the Tennessee couple who want to get pregnant, but whose insurance doesn’t cover the $20,000 worth of “medications, surgeries, scans, lab monitoring, and appointments [that] will need to be paid for upfront and out-of-pocket” for in vitro fertilization. Would an ideal healthcare system cover in vitro for anyone, full stop? Took a buzz through the NHS requirements[0] and there are definitely restrictions. And in v…

In my opinion, if you can't afford the $20k, you can't afford the kid. In my ideal healthcare system, you'd have to put up a bond to prove financial means before being allowed to have kids.

Re: GoFundMe CEO: ‘Gigantic Gaps’ in Health System Showing Up in Crowdfunding

#95

Post by rosser »

conanbatt wrote: post #69
bitcurious wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? Clinical trials in the US tend to be free from the patient's point of view.

Because governments dont spend nearly as much as private investment into the medical field, and have a very different alignment in terms of costs/revenues. The second part of the sentence alludes to something I did not intend to imply.

> Because governments dont spend nearly as much as private investment into the medical field...

Are you not aware of how much fundamental drug and medical research is actually conducted on the taxpayer's dime at the university level, and then exclusively licensed to private enterprise for commercial exploitation?

I've seen a number of sources make a compelling case that "big pharma"'s number one line item is marketing, not research.

Re: GoFundMe CEO: ‘Gigantic Gaps’ in Health System Showing Up in Crowdfunding

#96

Post by hippich »

SequoiaHope wrote: post #52
sharkweek wrote: post #4

I like to write short stories in my free time. One that I’ve been working on over the last year is one where the concept of “crowdfunded healthcare” evolves into a dystopian game show where people go on TV and share their sob story on why they need money. Then the viewers at home get to choose who gets the show’s prize money each season through a bracket style voting system that crowns a champion at the end. I had to…

One thing I’ve been studying a lot on my free time is the deep history of the concept of socialism. Not a particular implementation but the idea that it would be a good idea for us to intentionally build a world where everyone has certain basic needs met by society at large. In particular there is a rich history of “libertarian socialism” which advocates for direct social support of one another without a state. Typic…

My current world view is that socialism implemented via central authority ruling over a very large group (i.e. socialistic government of USSR) is not working, because personal relationships connections are broken when helping each other is outsourced to some abstract entity. It is that entity being praised and hated when someone gets help or someone doesn't. The fact that it is neighbors, other region people, etc actually are involved in that is lost. No longer you can shame your neighbor for not helping a neighbor, or when they help - they get no word of appreciation. It is all abstracted away behind "They" - "why They did not fix roads?", "They healed my child from cancer", "They produced enormous GDP". This is the opposite of "my neighbor took my wife to the hospital when her waters broke and my car broke too", "our neighborhood resurfaced our road".

In fact... The same thoughts probably apply to most modern and developed countries, as most of them has a significant amount of socialistic elements already...

Re: GoFundMe CEO: ‘Gigantic Gaps’ in Health System Showing Up in Crowdfunding

#97

Post by anonytrary »

sharkweek wrote: post #4

I like to write short stories in my free time. One that I’ve been working on over the last year is one where the concept of “crowdfunded healthcare” evolves into a dystopian game show where people go on TV and share their sob story on why they need money. Then the viewers at home get to choose who gets the show’s prize money each season through a bracket style voting system that crowns a champion at the end. I had to…

Please finish that story! It sounds really good, reminds me of a Black Mirror episode.

Re: GoFundMe CEO: ‘Gigantic Gaps’ in Health System Showing Up in Crowdfunding

#98

Post by DanBC »

conanbatt wrote: post #93
DanBC wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't mean those tourists are getting effective or even safe treatment. It just means the US hospitals are good at marketing to desperate and wealthy people.

The funny paradox of argumenting people are stupid is that inevitably you will be put in the same category.

I'm not saying those people are stupid. I'm saying there's an information asymetry that doesn't benefit the patient customer.

Re: GoFundMe CEO: ‘Gigantic Gaps’ in Health System Showing Up in Crowdfunding

#99

Post by hippich »

Brendinooo wrote: post #31

>Or the Tennessee couple who want to get pregnant, but whose insurance doesn’t cover the $20,000 worth of “medications, surgeries, scans, lab monitoring, and appointments [that] will need to be paid for upfront and out-of-pocket” for in vitro fertilization. Would an ideal healthcare system cover in vitro for anyone, full stop? Took a buzz through the NHS requirements[0] and there are definitely restrictions. And in v…

It just happened that I had a paper discussing IVF vs IVM last week. There are some researches, inconclusive, that suggest that state-paid IVF/IVM is beneficial for the country, as a newly minted citizen on average will produce significantly more in the tax revenue than an original bill for the procedure, even if you consider 1/5 chance of success for such procedure.

Obviously, it is not clear cut. At the very least likely there is an upper limit how many citizens country can support, but certainly, it is not a 100% undesirable for the state to fund such procedures.

Re: GoFundMe CEO: ‘Gigantic Gaps’ in Health System Showing Up in Crowdfunding

#100

Post by conanbatt »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #91
conanbatt wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We would all contribute to the payment of expensive operations via taxes in a single payer system. That's just insurance, managed by the state. > But with single payer, we cut out companies in the middle pulling a heafty profit Oh boy. Lets say I concede, for the sake of argument, that government can run a private business with the same efficiency, and that the profits it would make as private are given back to its…

I’d still prefer the state over private insurance companies (Medicare is well run and popular). As Steve Jobs said about Dropbox, you’re a feature (insurance companies) not a product.

> I’d still prefer the state over private insurance companies (Medicare is well run and popular). And I vote accordingly.

Thats perfectly reasonable, but no need to make a single payer system for that. Just allow medicare to compete in the open market. Thats a much smaller program with a lot less risk.

Unfortunately the chances of such a plan to succeed are nil. Thats why big healthcare reform proposals want to strong-arm the position, with single-payer proposals. Its true medicare is popular, but remember it's free insurance for its patients today. If you eliminated the medicare payroll tax and made it a monthly payment, I assure you old people will not have the same opinion on the topic.

Post reply on HN