131–140 of 168 posts
> “AI” (or more accurately language learning models nowhere close to sentience or genuine awareness) has plenty of innovative potential. Unfortunately, most of the folks actually in charge of the technology’s deployment largely see it as a way to cut corners, attack labor, and double down on all of their very worst impulses. Having read the first paragraph with its profound and non-bias insight, I can only expect tha…
Alternate headline: "Our Healthcare System continues to deny claims, now with AI". Makes it clearer who the culprit is.. its not AI. They have been denying claims for decades without any help from AI too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not that black and white. There's more at play than just charges. Things can be better and still shockingly corrupt, with extreme amounts of unjustified overhead. Things are minimally better for any individual patient, while being extremely more expensive, and the insurance overhead has skyrocketed. The question is a little bit like responding to a complaint about industrialized agriculture's effects on the envi…
> It's not that black and white The reason I wrote anything was that your original comment sounded very black and white to me. I think we tend to overlook how much things improve in the long term. Knowing that they do hints at potential to do better still and should encourage us to take action and improve the situation. Pointing out the current problems is necessary for that to happen. However, your comment came acro…
I wouldn't deny that many of these things have improved. Very little actually gets worse in a literal sense (environmental issues and other negative externalities aside, though they are very relevant as well). The concern is that they tend to get marginally better when they should by all means be getting significantly better, because the lion's share of the benefits feed the ever-widening wealth gap.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> valid argument to be made that access to AI medical advice is better than access to no medical advice. This is not true. And it's where I believe your whole response takes a wrong turn. Why is it wrong? Because of risk of harm. Giving out wrong information can easily kill people. Or permanently insure them. There's a tremendous amount of harm that can occur if you do things wrong in medicine. When you attach "an AI…
I agree with what you're saying here - absolutely, bad medical advice from AI (or anywhere) can cause harm. What I disagree with is the way that you're drawing the conclusion that there isn't even a valid argument to be made for using AI. To be clear, I didn't say we absolutely should do this - the part of my post you quoted is where I said there's an argument for it (i.e. we should have the discussion and evaluate).…
I am guessing the latter though I don’t know for sure.
Never in a million years could I have imagined there would be something worse than navigating the health care system. Hours of phone calls with deliberately confusing systems, impotent customer service representatives and no choices. It's like the movie Brazil already. Why wouldn't they add AI? Great idea.
Hah. There's literally an AI startup designed to automatically navigate confusing phone trees to get information from health systems: https://outbound.ai
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The gap between rich and poor is growing at increasing pace, just like the gap between rich and mega-rich is. If you went completely hungry yesterday, nearly starved to death, but today you get enough calories that you feel less pain so you can at least stand up and walk around a bit, while you watch your brother stuff his face with so much cake he has to puke 3 times to make room for more, to then play frisbee with…
> The gap between rich and poor is growing at increasing pace, just like the gap between rich and mega-rich is. Why the hell should that matter? If the system wanted to keep poor people poor, won't the poverty rate stay the same? Thats the assertion I was countering. Why keep moving the goalpost? But I will play along: > If you went completely hungry yesterday, nearly starved to death, but today you get enough calori…
One needs to look at circumstances that allow different inputs in the first place.
Your capacity for input is not some inherent core part of your being, unless you believe in souls, it is a result of what surrounds you and what has come before you.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We don't have a free market in healthcare in the U.S. though. You can be for a free market and against the abomination we currently have. If we just went back to 80%/20%, high-premium-or-high-deductible proper insurance , no HMOs, no PPOs, no co-pays, none of that nonsense, with published pricing, then we'd have a free market.
Is the regulations that are forcing co-pays, networks, obscured pricing? From the outside it sounds like the market doing it's best to extract as much money as possible, with the occasional regulation designed to look like someone is trying to fix the mess with a pretty bandaid (like the recent one on detailed upfront pricing).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We don't have a free market in healthcare in the U.S. though. You can be for a free market and against the abomination we currently have. If we just went back to 80%/20%, high-premium-or-high-deductible proper insurance , no HMOs, no PPOs, no co-pays, none of that nonsense, with published pricing, then we'd have a free market.
I'm all for reforms to move towards a more market based system. But one has to recognize that at this point we're nearing a century of anti-market meddling - a quick search says 1943 is when healthcare started getting bundled with employment! And talking about a "free" market is a red herring. There's no reason to believe that the current industry actually wishes to converge on uniform prices with upfront transparenc…
Adam Smith himself noted that capitalists seek rent. That doesn't mean that capitalism is all bad. The healthcare industry almost certainly does not want a free market, but so what, it's about whether the state makes it so there's a free market anyways or else makes deals with the industry it ought to regulate.
Regulatory capture is a thing, a very real thing, and a very big deal.
> Also to have an actual free market we'd need to eliminate things like mandatory pharmaceutical prescriptions and patents, which there is unfortunately very little support for doing.
Patents are not the problem. Though I'd be happy to see patent terms shortened, especially for software patents.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Artificial scarcity? Maybe. There aren't but so many households with children that fit inside the venn diagram of can afford med school, has the intellectual capacity and bloody-mindedness to actually finish med school, and is interested in going to med school.
Yes and no. No doubt the medical profession requires talent and rigor, but I think to some extent the hurdles which are placed in front of students who want to become doctors are artificially high to help justify the small number of graduates medical schools put out, which protects the artificially high salaries. For instance, if you read up on the frankly cruel residency process which doctors are forced to clear in…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Artificial scarcity? Maybe. There aren't but so many households with children that fit inside the venn diagram of can afford med school, has the intellectual capacity and bloody-mindedness to actually finish med school, and is interested in going to med school.
> There aren't but so many households with children that fit inside the venn diagram of can afford med school, has the intellectual capacity and bloody-mindedness to actually finish med school, and is interested in going to med school. That is the artificial scarcity he was referring to. There is no reason to lump all medicine together in a MD degree /certification. Why not have one certification for each common prob…