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How Palantir Will Steal the NHS

doctorow.medium.com

11–20 of 28 posts

Re: How Palantir Will Steal the NHS

#11
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is an increasing number of people (including older people) with immigration, healthy birth rates and extending lifespan, not increasing the budget at corresponding speed (let alone keeping it static) is in all ways that matter effectively cutting it.

A balanced budget doesn't matter?

When the number of users you are serving goes up and the services each user uses increases due to age, then a balanced budget is in fact a cut in per user and especially per user service terms.

Re: How Palantir Will Steal the NHS

#12

They can have it. It's broken anyway. Even the basics don't work anymore. My father can't get an injury looked at. After weeks he got a doctor's appointment, doctor says he needs tests at the local hospital. Local hospital doesn't pick up the phone and only has a webpage for booking appointments, said page simply says there are no appointments available. As in, permanently. Not like, no slots in the next few weeks. A…

It is cheaper to fly to India and get it seen by a specialist and have it treated or have a surgery done on the same day as you land. if you pay slightly extra, it will include 3 course meals as well.

The main problem is the lack of doctors, sure we import plenty of them. I wont even get into how we basically import almost what seems like slave labour. also no one wants to spend 15-20 years of their life for little returns, the easy answer is to increase the number of medical colleges, reduce the number of years to train by creating more specialisations.

apart from a few delicate surgeries, majority of the procedures are learnt with a year or two of training post your foundation level medical school, lot of specialisations can be automated away, Radiologists are probably the first to disappear.

Re: How Palantir Will Steal the NHS

#13
post #3

Scary stuff but unfortunately true. Thiel is really smart. He always talk about the right to online privacy [1] and especially his own, because his gay, living in NZ, etc. But his actions and the actions of his companies tells a totally different story. Explanation: When it comes to money vs. privacy, money always wins. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/16/opinion/peter-thiel-the-o...

Which part of the Gawker was about money?

Re: How Palantir Will Steal the NHS

#14

They can have it. It's broken anyway. Even the basics don't work anymore. My father can't get an injury looked at. After weeks he got a doctor's appointment, doctor says he needs tests at the local hospital. Local hospital doesn't pick up the phone and only has a webpage for booking appointments, said page simply says there are no appointments available. As in, permanently. Not like, no slots in the next few weeks. A…

Where in the country do you live? I've had some rough experiences down south but that sounds next level.

Re: How Palantir Will Steal the NHS

#15

They can have it. It's broken anyway. Even the basics don't work anymore. My father can't get an injury looked at. After weeks he got a doctor's appointment, doctor says he needs tests at the local hospital. Local hospital doesn't pick up the phone and only has a webpage for booking appointments, said page simply says there are no appointments available. As in, permanently. Not like, no slots in the next few weeks. A…

> They can have it. It's broken anyway.

"That's the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don't work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital."

Re: How Palantir Will Steal the NHS

#16
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there is an increasing number of people (including older people) with immigration, healthy birth rates and extending lifespan, not increasing the budget at corresponding speed (let alone keeping it static) is in all ways that matter effectively cutting it.

A balanced budget doesn't matter?

No, it does not.

Re: How Palantir Will Steal the NHS

#17

I don’t get it.. how can a mere software company be part of an elaborate and insidious plot to rob the UK public? They sell software, do not get access to the data! What’s different from any other company?

The article nicely explains this. They can buy up all competitors at inflated prices, which means they can hold the NHS hostage with its own data.

So can other companies! Once they spent all that money, what prevents other competitors from taking that business from them?

Re: How Palantir Will Steal the NHS

#18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article nicely explains this. They can buy up all competitors at inflated prices, which means they can hold the NHS hostage with its own data.

So can other companies! Once they spent all that money, what prevents other competitors from taking that business from them?

They can simply not sell them. Palantir "buying" a company in this context means they either buy the owner out or buy controlling shares, in both cases nothing happens from there that they don't want to happen.

Re: How Palantir Will Steal the NHS

#19
post #12

They can have it. It's broken anyway. Even the basics don't work anymore. My father can't get an injury looked at. After weeks he got a doctor's appointment, doctor says he needs tests at the local hospital. Local hospital doesn't pick up the phone and only has a webpage for booking appointments, said page simply says there are no appointments available. As in, permanently. Not like, no slots in the next few weeks. A…

It is cheaper to fly to India and get it seen by a specialist and have it treated or have a surgery done on the same day as you land. if you pay slightly extra, it will include 3 course meals as well. The main problem is the lack of doctors, sure we import plenty of them. I wont even get into how we basically import almost what seems like slave labour. also no one wants to spend 15-20 years of their life for little r…

[deleted]

Re: How Palantir Will Steal the NHS

#20

They can have it. It's broken anyway. Even the basics don't work anymore. My father can't get an injury looked at. After weeks he got a doctor's appointment, doctor says he needs tests at the local hospital. Local hospital doesn't pick up the phone and only has a webpage for booking appointments, said page simply says there are no appointments available. As in, permanently. Not like, no slots in the next few weeks. A…

> They can have it. It's broken anyway. "That's the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don't work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital."

The NHS hasn't been defunded. Check my other comment on this thread - NHS funding has never been cut and has risen far faster than the population size has. The collapse here wasn't a slow event anyway, it has very clearly been triggered by lockdowns/vaccines. The near closure of the health service in a failed attempt to slow the spread of an airborne virus created a backlog, forcing vaccines on the care home industry caused a lot of people to quit exacerbating an already existing bed blocker crisis, and now the ambulance services are being overwhelmed by a sudden and (officially) "unexplained" rise in callouts for heart attacks, strokes etc. What could possibly cause that I have no idea.

And the NHS isn't being privatized anyway so no clue what you're even talking about. Privatizing it might start to fix it. Good luck getting contracts that pay you by size of your patient list and not how much work you actually do, in a properly privatized system!

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