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Alphabet is spending billions to become a force in health care

economist.com

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

#81

Post by xyzzyz »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #66
rayiner wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMO, the Pacific coast states need to reject national health care, create a health-care pact between states that slowly grows larger by adding new states. If another state doesn't want to join, then, so be it. It blows my mind that they don’t do this. During most of the 20th century, Democrat-run states wanted to tax Republican California to pay for social programs. So doing things at the national level was critica…

Vermont did try it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermont_health_care_reform It does not work for the reasons tptacek wrote. With freedom of movement, eventually net benefit recipients will move in, and net payers into the system will move out.

Adverse selection is not at all why Vermont rolled back their decision.

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

#82

Post by samarthr1 »

jholman wrote: post #67
tchvil wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it frequently here... I suppose it comes from French. Viola means rape(il la viola) or break the law(il viola la loi). The real one is voilà! And dropping the accent, is apparently acceptable in English. Voila! ;)

Because we're writing in English, "viola" is neither rape nor lawbreaking, though "violate" can mean either of those. In English, "viola" is the name of a stringed instrument. Voila, behold a viola! One fourth of a string quartet! But if you're irked by "viola", it could be worse, they could have written "wallah", which is all too frequent.

And in Hindi, Wallah means 'person'. Generally used in conjunction with their business. For example, a sweet shop owner is called a Mithai Wallah.

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

#83

Post by aliswe »

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…

They do run a number of long-shot altruist projects now and then, by the way. They did some tests of UBI in the poorest parts of the world iirc.

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

#84

Post by Guthur »

cardosof wrote: post #72

Just imagine a world where they revolutionized healthcare as they did with advertising!

So, pushing treatments you didn't want or need? Yeah we're already there and they've certainly got the government connections to make it very lucrative.

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

#85

Post by refurb »

bruce511 wrote: post #63
refurb wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada has "free" universal healthcare, but to call it a "solved problem" seems pretty naive.

It's a solved problem in the sense that it exists, and works[1] and it is available in a lot more places than Canada. [1] "works" is an interesting point because it isn't clearly defined, and usually means different things to different people. Ever experience of the system is "unique" - there is this mix of human patient with human provider with finite resources with medical knowledge with time. So there are plenty o…

But the US isn't "healthcare based on your wealth".

You have Medicaid for the poor, heavily subsidized Obamacare for the people who don't get it through their employer (hello $100/month plan!) and Medicare for the retired.

I mean my cousin in the US whose kid has cystic fibrosis get better care through Medicaid than our other cousin in Canada who can't even get access to the latest drugs.

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

#86

Post by antisthenes »

glglwty wrote: post #79
GoOnThenDoTell wrote: post #21

Please no. They have too much info on everyone already

Which is exactly why they might be able to make healthcare cheaper.

There are already at least 2 better methods of making health care cheaper.

Price controls and disconnecting it from employment.

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

#87

Post by throwawaylinux »

glglwty wrote: post #79
GoOnThenDoTell wrote: post #21

Please no. They have too much info on everyone already

Which is exactly why they might be able to make healthcare cheaper.

Healthcare is not expensive for lack of huge government-entangled corporations monopolizing and commercializing patient personal information. At least not in USA, where healthcare legislation is written by and for the industry (e.g., https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/05/obamac...), and total healthcare expenditure is somewhere around double that of most other first world countries with more universal healthcare systems, for worse outcomes in many objective measures (at least of overall social health, I realize the standard of care in America is probably second to none if you can pay for it).

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

#88

Post by robocat »

sumy23 wrote: post #20
thr0wawayf00 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

To agree: most wealthy countries spend somewhere between 10% and 12%[1] of GDP on healthcare. The USA is an outlier in %GDP, and total spending per capita[2], for lower life expectancy - check this graph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Life_expectancy_vs_health...

[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.GD.ZS?most_...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...

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

#90

Post by afiori »

tchvil wrote: post #59
systemvoltage wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I see it frequently here... I suppose it comes from French. Viola means rape(il la viola) or break the law(il viola la loi). The real one is voilà! And dropping the accent, is apparently acceptable in English. Voila! ;)

> il

Are you mixing French and Italian articles?

As an addendum wiktionary[0] is always useful when searching other meanings of a word

[0]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/viola

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