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

U.S. health spending on pace to hit $6T

statnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 33 posts

Re: U.S. health spending on pace to hit $6T

#11

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ballsac wrote: post #8
brandonb wrote: post #4

IMO, there's an interesting opportunity for AI to make healthcare deflationary. For example, Medicare is launching a new program in July that pays a fixed rate for achieving defined outcomes, like lowering blood pressure or cholesterol. Medicare's explicit goal here is to create incentives to automate the repetitive parts of care delivery with software. (Much of preventive cardiology is surprisingly algorithmic and g…

> IMO, there's an interesting opportunity for AI to make healthcare deflationary. How many times have I heard this, about how many techs. But this time for real? Health spending in the us is too tied up with the country’s economy for it to ever be reduced. Same goes for housing. The cost of both of these will continue to increase. As long as the investor class is satisfied, this is all that matters.

> Health spending in the us is too tied up with the country’s economy for it to ever be reduced. Same goes for housing

These are massively incomparable. Most householders live in homes they own. Those homes, moreover, are usually a substantial if not dominating fraction of their net worth. And they're leveraged. This produces a broad level of interest in maintaning or raising home prices.

Healthcare is more narrowly owned. It's not as leveraged. And very few housholds have a commanding fraction of their net worth in healthcare assets.

Re: U.S. health spending on pace to hit $6T

#12

Post by brandonb »

skt5 wrote: post #6
brandonb wrote: post #4

IMO, there's an interesting opportunity for AI to make healthcare deflationary. For example, Medicare is launching a new program in July that pays a fixed rate for achieving defined outcomes, like lowering blood pressure or cholesterol. Medicare's explicit goal here is to create incentives to automate the repetitive parts of care delivery with software. (Much of preventive cardiology is surprisingly algorithmic and g…

> If you're a software engineer who cares about health, and have been sitting on the sidelines till now, I think the next few years are a really interesting time to make a contribution. do you have thoughts on what that looks like? what does the hiring landscape look like?

Right now lots of good health companies hiring, including my own (Empirical). https://www.workatastartup.com/ lets you filter YC companies to see health startups, by stage and location (or remote).

Re: U.S. health spending on pace to hit $6T

#13

Post by vitally3643 »

brandonb wrote: post #4

IMO, there's an interesting opportunity for AI to make healthcare deflationary. For example, Medicare is launching a new program in July that pays a fixed rate for achieving defined outcomes, like lowering blood pressure or cholesterol. Medicare's explicit goal here is to create incentives to automate the repetitive parts of care delivery with software. (Much of preventive cardiology is surprisingly algorithmic and g…

"AI will solve this deeply rooted social problem" is, and forgive my bluntness, is one of the most idiotic AI opinions I've seen this week.

The only thing that will fix American healthcare is absolute abolishment of private insurance. That's it. No amount of gentle incentive tweaking or whizbang technology is going to solve the fundamental problem of human greed and immorality.

Allowing private health insurance to exist is inhumane and can only result in profit extraction and exploitation of the most vulnerable members of society whose only options are literally to pay up or die.

That's the break. We've allowed profit-seeking individuals to stand in between citizens and literal life saving medicine. And you think the solution to that is to add more middlemen and profiteering exploitative corporations. Utter insanity.

The solution is to make it illegal for anyone to say "no, you may not have this life saving medication or proceedure". The solution is to remove profit from medicine. To allow profiteering and gatekeeping of people's very lives is immoral in the extreme. Giving more private corporations more influence is insanity. The solution is less private influence of medicine, not more.

Re: U.S. health spending on pace to hit $6T

#14

Post by bhelkey »

The US spent $2 Trillion dollars on Medicare and Medicaid in 2024 [1][2]. If the US spent this money as efficiently as Japan (or UK [3], ...) it could pay for Healthcare for every single resident with this $2 Trillion dollars.

[1] https://www.kff.org/medicaid/medicaid-financing-the-basics/#...

[2] https://usafacts.org/answers/how-much-does-medicare-cost-the...

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy7zvp5xrqo

Re: U.S. health spending on pace to hit $6T

#15

Post by lovich »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #11
ballsac wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMO, there's an interesting opportunity for AI to make healthcare deflationary. How many times have I heard this, about how many techs. But this time for real? Health spending in the us is too tied up with the country’s economy for it to ever be reduced. Same goes for housing. The cost of both of these will continue to increase. As long as the investor class is satisfied, this is all that matters.

> Health spending in the us is too tied up with the country’s economy for it to ever be reduced. Same goes for housing These are massively incomparable. Most householders live in homes they own. Those homes, moreover, are usually a substantial if not dominating fraction of their net worth. And they're leveraged. This produces a broad level of interest in maintaning or raising home prices. Healthcare is more narrowly…

It is however a highly inelastic good and some of the most expensive care happens when the person who ends up paying isn’t in the state of mind to make decisions such as being unconscious for emergency care, or late in life when dealing with dementia and other diseases that rob you of your faculties. It’s primed to be able to extract everything because most people value being alive above everything else.

Re: U.S. health spending on pace to hit $6T

#17

Post by JumpCrisscross »

lovich wrote: post #15
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Health spending in the us is too tied up with the country’s economy for it to ever be reduced. Same goes for housing These are massively incomparable. Most householders live in homes they own. Those homes, moreover, are usually a substantial if not dominating fraction of their net worth. And they're leveraged. This produces a broad level of interest in maintaning or raising home prices. Healthcare is more narrowly…

It is however a highly inelastic good and some of the most expensive care happens when the person who ends up paying isn’t in the state of mind to make decisions such as being unconscious for emergency care, or late in life when dealing with dementia and other diseases that rob you of your faculties. It’s primed to be able to extract everything because most people value being alive above everything else.

> the person who ends up paying isn’t in the state of mind to make decisions such as being unconscious for emergency care, or late in life when dealing with dementia and other diseases that rob you of your faculties

Most healthcare in America isn't paid for by the patient.

Re: U.S. health spending on pace to hit $6T

#18

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

Bender wrote: post #3

How much of that spending is continuously treating symptoms vs. finding and curing root causes? At what point do the pentagon and other agencies step in and treat this like an unsustainable existential threat to the country?

Never going to happen. Look how people freaked when politely asked to wear a mask.

Re: U.S. health spending on pace to hit $6T

#19

Post by alex0015 »

vitally3643 wrote: post #13
brandonb wrote: post #4

IMO, there's an interesting opportunity for AI to make healthcare deflationary. For example, Medicare is launching a new program in July that pays a fixed rate for achieving defined outcomes, like lowering blood pressure or cholesterol. Medicare's explicit goal here is to create incentives to automate the repetitive parts of care delivery with software. (Much of preventive cardiology is surprisingly algorithmic and g…

"AI will solve this deeply rooted social problem" is, and forgive my bluntness, is one of the most idiotic AI opinions I've seen this week. The only thing that will fix American healthcare is absolute abolishment of private insurance. That's it. No amount of gentle incentive tweaking or whizbang technology is going to solve the fundamental problem of human greed and immorality. Allowing private health insurance to ex…

How exactly do you propose to "remove profit from medicine?" If someone wants to have a procedure done and their insurance doesn't want to pay, they can still pay the doctor to get it done themselves. And it will still be very expensive because doctors in the US are used to charging very high salaries and using medical equipment and medicines that cost a lot of money. Insurance companies are required by law to use 80 percent of their income to pay claims out to their customers already. Medicine costs a lot.

Re: U.S. health spending on pace to hit $6T

#20

Post by tocs3 »

skt5 wrote: post #6
brandonb wrote: post #4

IMO, there's an interesting opportunity for AI to make healthcare deflationary. For example, Medicare is launching a new program in July that pays a fixed rate for achieving defined outcomes, like lowering blood pressure or cholesterol. Medicare's explicit goal here is to create incentives to automate the repetitive parts of care delivery with software. (Much of preventive cardiology is surprisingly algorithmic and g…

> If you're a software engineer who cares about health, and have been sitting on the sidelines till now, I think the next few years are a really interesting time to make a contribution. do you have thoughts on what that looks like? what does the hiring landscape look like?

do you have thoughts on what that looks like?

There is so much to be done and it is not going to be solved by any one thing. That in mind, something like an independent third party patient advocates / advisors would be great. It is hard to be an informed patient these days, Navigating insurance and paperwork is tough and getting second opinions is sometimes had.

Post reply on HN