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

Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices

dolthub.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 549 posts

Re: Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices

#181

Post by bhupy »

ggrrhh_ta wrote: post #180
ggrrhh_ta wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social insurance is covered by AHV/SVA/IV (funded by salary deductions and cover congenital defects, invalidity, some rehabilitation therapies and other non profitable coverage) and of course healthcare is not fully privatized as you say: private insurances are private, offering highly regulated compulsory insurance and can offer less regulated additional insurance. Some hospitals/clinics/health and elderly centers (…

I guess that you don't know that, for example, if you get operated of a congenital defect in Switzerland, the bill goes to the SVA instead of to your private insurance (and so on for specific cases) I am not conflating anything, you have a superficial understanding that makes you think it is privatized. If you dig into the spending public & private and the actual details you would see that Switzerland is not privatiz…

I'm referring to the majority of working age adults.

Even the US uses Medicare for certain congenital diseases as well (as well as end-stage renal disease).

The Swiss private KV system accounts for the vast majority of health expenditure, even more so than the US where half of health expenditure is nationalized in Medicare and Medicaid.

Re: Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices

#182

Post by ZeroCool2u »

Titan2189 wrote: post #44

Someone with the right connections should call up Google Cloud and ask them to ingest the data into BigQuery as an example dataset like the NY taxi trips. It would be a great way for them to show off the capabilities of the engine and helpful for everyone wanting to do analysis on it. https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/public-data

This is exactly what I was thinking. This is perfect for BQ. Google might do this internally anyways for their healthcare efforts.

Re: Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices

#183

Post by Ballu »

haberman wrote: post #158
duffpkg wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are rarely satisfied with this answer but its demonstrably true and was proven time and time again at the facilities ClearHealth managed. 1) Feverent, almost religious, adherence to hand washing. 2) No neck ties or dangly sleves whatsoever in buildings that house patients. 3) Change from stainless steel hardware for doors and travel touch surfaces back to "brass/copper". Those are simple, virtually free, thing…

> Change from stainless steel hardware for doors and travel touch surfaces back to "brass/copper". I have never heard of this. I had to Google it to even understand your meaning. It's eye-opening to learn that different metal surfaces have an effect on the spread of germs.

Could you post some good links you read/browsed? Google is providing too much junk and difficult to reach any high level conclusion.

Re: Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices

#185

Post by bombcar »

snuxoll wrote: post #137
BitwiseFool wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"3) Change from stainless steel hardware for doors and travel touch surfaces back to "brass/copper". Because of the pandemic I started encountering doors that have a shoe pull, where you can use your foot to open the door instead of having to touch the handle. I really hope these catch on, but they are still quite rare.

Also stop getting rid of paper towels if you still have manual faucets. Nothing grosses me out more than going to a public restroom with only air dryers, but manually operated faucets that now require you use clean hands to turn off after you turned them on with presumably dirty hands.

Just like the door foot things, you’re supposed to Bruce lee the faucet afterwards and turn it off with your foot.

Re: Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices

#186

Post by bombcar »

haberman wrote: post #158
duffpkg wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are rarely satisfied with this answer but its demonstrably true and was proven time and time again at the facilities ClearHealth managed. 1) Feverent, almost religious, adherence to hand washing. 2) No neck ties or dangly sleves whatsoever in buildings that house patients. 3) Change from stainless steel hardware for doors and travel touch surfaces back to "brass/copper". Those are simple, virtually free, thing…

> Change from stainless steel hardware for doors and travel touch surfaces back to "brass/copper". I have never heard of this. I had to Google it to even understand your meaning. It's eye-opening to learn that different metal surfaces have an effect on the spread of germs.

Copper is a well-known drain additive to kill roots.

Re: Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices

#187

Post by ggrrhh_ta »

bhupy wrote: post #181
ggrrhh_ta wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess that you don't know that, for example, if you get operated of a congenital defect in Switzerland, the bill goes to the SVA instead of to your private insurance (and so on for specific cases) I am not conflating anything, you have a superficial understanding that makes you think it is privatized. If you dig into the spending public & private and the actual details you would see that Switzerland is not privatiz…

I'm referring to the majority of working age adults. Even the US uses Medicare for certain congenital diseases as well (as well as end-stage renal disease). The Swiss private KV system accounts for the vast majority of health expenditure, even more so than the US where half of health expenditure is nationalized in Medicare and Medicaid.

But another way in which Switzerland maintains its healthcare system with public money is through the -often deficitary- cantonal hospitals/clinics/health care centers (also helped at the municipal level)

Re: Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices

#188

Post by groby_b »

dominotw wrote: post #166
e_i_pi_2 wrote: post #80

My current assumption is that private healthcare/insurance is to blame, because countries without that or with less generally have better outcomes at less cost. Looking for evidence to the contrary

> countries without that or with less generally have better outcomes at less cost. > Looking for evidence to the contrary There was no evidence behind your claim either. 90% of US healthcare costs go to managing ( not treating ) obesity/metabolic disease . Yes 90% [1]. Which country with similar metabolic disease rate has better outcomes with less costs? 1. https://www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/about/costs/index.htm

That is not at all what your link says.

"90% of the nation's $4.1 trillion in annual health care expenditures go to people with chronic and mental health conditions"

Obesity is $173 billion, diabetes $327 billion.

We could certainly do much better, but blaming health care cost on metabolic diseases is disingenuous. Diabetes cost is roughly the same percentage of total expenditure as it is in other industrialized nations. (I didn't check obesity)

It stands to reason that really, the problem is the size of the pie, not the size of the slice.

Re: Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices

#189

Post by soheil »

e_i_pi_2 wrote: post #71
duffpkg wrote: post #70

I'm author of Hacking Healthcare for O'Reilly, 20 year health system executive, blah, blah. It's very easy for people to forget the scale of the US "health system", we are talking 1/5, maybe more, of the entire US economy. If US healthcare spending were a country, it would have the third largest GDP in the world. Accidents of history and the massive federal beauracracy created the crazy monster of ICD/CPT codes that…

Do you consider the amount that the US spends per capita on healthcare relative to other countries for the same standard of care a "failure" of the healthcare industry? Or is there some other reason healthcare "just costs more" here? Also wondering what you think a solution is - single-payer for better and simpler price negotiations, or some other approach? My main concern is if we're spending 20% of GDP on something…

> if we're spending 20% of GDP on something other countries accomplish with 10%, then that's a huge waste

I don't think that money is necessarily a waste if it goes back into the economy one way or another. There are very few things that are actually a waste, one example is probably flying first class or private jet. If you literally burn money then it's clearly a waste. A part of me thinks the huge cost of healthcare is contributing to more R&D by the big pharma and possibly the reason we're seeing RDNA breakthroughs. Yes a lot of that money also ends up in the pocket of people running the show, but they most likely then invest it with a Blackrock which in turn pushes the money back into the economy in form of private equity, VC funds, etc. For the record I don't like the high healthcare prices and wish US was more similar to other countries in this regard.

Re: Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices

#190

Post by cmalmberg23 »

dominotw wrote: post #166
e_i_pi_2 wrote: post #80

My current assumption is that private healthcare/insurance is to blame, because countries without that or with less generally have better outcomes at less cost. Looking for evidence to the contrary

> countries without that or with less generally have better outcomes at less cost. > Looking for evidence to the contrary There was no evidence behind your claim either. 90% of US healthcare costs go to managing ( not treating ) obesity/metabolic disease . Yes 90% [1]. Which country with similar metabolic disease rate has better outcomes with less costs? 1. https://www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/about/costs/index.htm

The link you posted says that the 90% is to treat all "chronic and mental health conditions," which is a much larger grouping than just obesity/metabolic disease.
Post reply on HN