Please no. They have too much info on everyone already
Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care
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Re: Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care
#22Can't wait to get banned from healthcare with no recourse unless I'm lucky enough to frontpage HN.
Sarcasm aside I can't think of a company I'd trust less than Alphabet (maybe Meta) with managing healthcare.
Re: Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Yes, I know this. However, in this age of easy information and knowledge about other societies readily available it becomes more a matter of willful ignorance than being duped by propaganda.
Re: Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care
#24Google offers a lot of free services. Can they figure out how to make healthcare free?
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.)
I'm not convinced, even with the best of intentions. In fact, I am convinced of the opposite: A) Universal Health program would result in terrible quality health care B) It would lead to longer wait times, and less choices C) It would be insanely costly to fund. We've been busy printing a lot of $. Increased the Federal deficit from $21T to $30 since COVID and there isn't a good way to fund a bloated system in USA, comparisons with smaller nations is ridiculous and misleading.
We already have free health for the poor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicaid
> Medicaid is the largest source of funding for medical and health-related services for people with low income in the United States, providing free health insurance to 74 million low-income and disabled people (23% of Americans) as of 2017, as well as paying for half of all U.S. births in 2019.
What we should be doing is to fight the regulatory and bigpharma capture of US health system along with the horrible hospital + insurance racket. Google is now going to take advantage of the moat built by Big Gov and never ever allow anyone to compete.
Re: Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care
#25Google offers a lot of free services. Can they figure out how to make healthcare free?
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Re: Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care
#26Please no. They have too much info on everyone already
Step 1) Allow Gov to build up regulations so complex that it requires a force of nature to over come. Step 2) Big Tech builds technology around those regulations and sells it to people. Step 3) Viola! we have a giant massive ocean-like moat that surrounds the Big Gov + Big Tech castle. Never to be breached by the likes of Silicon Valley startups or otherwise.
We are already in a dystopian time.
Re: Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care
#27Can't wait to get banned from healthcare with no recourse unless I'm lucky enough to frontpage HN. Sarcasm aside I can't think of a company I'd trust less than Alphabet (maybe Meta) with managing healthcare.
I disagree. Alphabet values human life. Sure they may kill products constantly but I trust the company to uphold certain values, especially around humanistic principles.
Re: Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care
#28> 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.
That’s what those two links are exactly about, yes.
Re: Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care
#29How 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…
Isn't it fairly obvious how the costs could be decreased? Dozens of other countries have figured it out, there isn't some secret.