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

Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 227 posts

Re: Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care

#11

Post by HWR_14 »

jdminhbg wrote: post #6
thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #4

How incredible would it be if Alphabet spent, say 1% of their total healthcare venture budget, just running models on all of the different ways that the cost of healthcare could be reduced and access to care could increase. And maybe they do this already (we have no idea if they do, it might be nice to share that information if they did). It's just become so clear that many people believe the anti-science stuff that…

"Running models" can't fix problems that are political conflicts between competing interests. You don't need DeepMind to tell you Certificate of Need laws reduce access and increase price; you need a political coalition that can overturn them.

Running models is literally the way to satisfy the Certificate of Need. It's the way to fix the problem.

Re: Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care

#12

Post by thr0wawayf00 »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #8
thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #4

How incredible would it be if Alphabet spent, say 1% of their total healthcare venture budget, just running models on all of the different ways that the cost of healthcare could be reduced and access to care could increase. And maybe they do this already (we have no idea if they do, it might be nice to share that information if they did). It's just become so clear that many people believe the anti-science stuff that…

You're not getting cheaper healthcare by using more machine learning, it's a hard problem for a reason.

It's actually not. The CBO already built these models last year and reported that they reduced costs in nearly all cases, across the board[0]. It's only a hard problem because some billionaires want us to believe that it's a hard problem.

From the summary:

> The report makes many sound assumptions but also some questionable ones that are overly pessimistic. Yet, overall, its bottom-line estimates should reassure those concerned about the economic feasibility of single payer: The CBO projects that such reform would achieve universal coverage, bolster provider revenues for clinical services, and eliminate almost all copayments and deductibles—even as overall health care spending fell.

0: https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/forefront.20210210....

Re: Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care

#13

Post by metadat »

Apocryphon wrote: post #5

> In 2021 America’s five tech behemoths collectively spent more than $3bn on speculative health-care bets And there’s even more giants: https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/10/23162503/oracle-cerner-he... https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/health-tech/oracle-cerner-p...

Don't forget Oracle dropping 20+ Billie to acquire Cerner.

Re: Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care

#14

Post by suture »

thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #9
suture wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming by free you mean universal coverage that is (almost) free at the point of usage then this is a solved problem. What the United States lacks in order to realize a solution is political willpower and an electorate that is savvy enough to know that wanting such a system does not make one a communist. (And that being a communist does not make one an evil person.)

...also the fact that the electorate generally can't out-compete the big money interests that lobby heavily to keep healthcare a private venture. It's so easy to blame voters but the reality is that politics is about messaging, and how is the electorate supposed be savvy enough when these companies can spend unlimited amounts of money to keep us fighting each other about this stuff? Make no mistake, Google benefits f…

I don’t disagree in general with what you wrote. On the bogeyman of “socialism” I do blame the electorate. The irrational fear of anything remotely related to “socialism” in America has been going on far too long.

Re: Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care

#15

Post by metadat »

HWR_14 wrote: post #11
jdminhbg wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Running models" can't fix problems that are political conflicts between competing interests. You don't need DeepMind to tell you Certificate of Need laws reduce access and increase price; you need a political coalition that can overturn them.

Running models is literally the way to satisfy the Certificate of Need. It's the way to fix the problem.

Please explain further, this makes no sense to me.

Re: Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care

#16

Post by scarmig »

thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #4

How incredible would it be if Alphabet spent, say 1% of their total healthcare venture budget, just running models on all of the different ways that the cost of healthcare could be reduced and access to care could increase. And maybe they do this already (we have no idea if they do, it might be nice to share that information if they did). It's just become so clear that many people believe the anti-science stuff that…

Healthcare isn't expensive because there are huge swaths of spending unexamined by human intelligence that might become tractable with an automated process. On the contrary, it's one of the sectors that has the most eyes and brains pointed at costs and extracting as most money as possible.

On the topic of EMR systems in particular, they suck because the people using them hate them and because the people purchasing them, building them, and mandating them aren't the people using them. If it were just a matter of having enough money to throw at the problem, Epic would have done so already.

Re: Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care

#17

Post by 0xy »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #8
thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #4

How incredible would it be if Alphabet spent, say 1% of their total healthcare venture budget, just running models on all of the different ways that the cost of healthcare could be reduced and access to care could increase. And maybe they do this already (we have no idea if they do, it might be nice to share that information if they did). It's just become so clear that many people believe the anti-science stuff that…

You're not getting cheaper healthcare by using more machine learning, it's a hard problem for a reason.

It's a hard problem because the real problem is convincing a brain surgeon making $450,000 a year that he should be partially or wholly replaced with AI models.

It's the same reason costs to build subway tunnels has dramatically increased in NYC, labor unions have the process by the throat and will accept not even a cent in reduced labor costs, even when improvements would improve safety or efficiency.

Re: Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care

#18

Post by thr0wawayf00 »

suture wrote: post #14
thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...also the fact that the electorate generally can't out-compete the big money interests that lobby heavily to keep healthcare a private venture. It's so easy to blame voters but the reality is that politics is about messaging, and how is the electorate supposed be savvy enough when these companies can spend unlimited amounts of money to keep us fighting each other about this stuff? Make no mistake, Google benefits f…

I don’t disagree in general with what you wrote. On the bogeyman of “socialism” I do blame the electorate. The irrational fear of anything remotely related to “socialism” in America has been going on far too long.

And that fear is stoked from the top down. You hear it all the time from the leadership of a certain political party. It's not just something that people fear naturally, it's driven home explicitly by the political messaging of those that benefit the most from our current system.

Re: Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care

#19

Post by bergenty »

thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #4

How incredible would it be if Alphabet spent, say 1% of their total healthcare venture budget, just running models on all of the different ways that the cost of healthcare could be reduced and access to care could increase. And maybe they do this already (we have no idea if they do, it might be nice to share that information if they did). It's just become so clear that many people believe the anti-science stuff that…

[flagged]

Re: Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care

#20

Post by sumy23 »

thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #12
thatfrenchguy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not getting cheaper healthcare by using more machine learning, it's a hard problem for a reason.

It's actually not. The CBO already built these models last year and reported that they reduced costs in nearly all cases, across the board[0]. It's only a hard problem because some billionaires want us to believe that it's a hard problem. From the summary: > The report makes many sound assumptions but also some questionable ones that are overly pessimistic. Yet, overall, its bottom-line estimates should reassure thos…

There are political concerns as well. As the article mentions, healthcare spending is 17% of U.S. GDP (which is an absolutely insane figure). Healthcare jobs account for 14% of the workforce according to Census Bureau's 2019 American Community Survey. You can't get the first number down (17% of GDP) without impacting the second number (14% of jobs). I agree that single-payer would be a net benefit, but the U.S. hasn't shown much appetite for such tough political decisions.
Post reply on HN