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ChatGPT Health is a marketplace, guess who is the product?

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Re: ChatGPT Health is a marketplace, guess who is the product?

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I think what Workaccount2 is not realizing is that there's no bottom to "you have higher risk factors, why should I pay for you?", and so once you start down that way you may not like where it ends up. Some hobbies have higher injury rates, why should I pay for your health care if you choose to play those? Some parts of the country have lower life expectancies, why should I pay for your health care if you choos…

The actual realization, which usually comes years after the realization that there is no bottom, is that there is no top either. The battle along the spectrum of privatizing gains (lower healthcare premiums for a healthy lifestyle - high premiums for unhealthy lifestyle) vs socializing losses (paying $20/mo to get $1200/mo of care - paying $1200/mo for $0/mo of care) is constant and boundless in either direction.

But there is a bound in both directions?

On end, it's "national insurance", functionally equivalent to fully-tax-funded healthcare like the NHS or the German system with several providers competing but regulated to near identical results, but moreso as the UK and Germany also has private care; on the other, it's the absence of insurance.

Re: ChatGPT Health is a marketplace, guess who is the product?

#152
post #14
post #4

ChatGPT mostly refuses to talk health issues , while i have found Gemini is reasonably cooperative when asking for things like symptoms and treatments . This makes me not wanting to try out their new offering.

Is that foreshadowing of ChatGPT redirecting users to ChatGPT Health in some way? Base product no longer answers everything, now I need to pay an add-on fee to talk about health related things?

I doubt it. It's probably a CYA thing. There are a whole bunch of hot-button topics ChatGPT won't talk about, not because OpenAI will ever try to monetize them but because they're fodder for lawsuits.

Re: ChatGPT Health is a marketplace, guess who is the product?

#153
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all due respect, you are thinking like a good person, a human being who spent decades of their life to learn how to care for people. You took a pledge to Do-no-Harm. You are looking at these tools as tools. The owners and future owners of said data do not care about anything other than profits and exploitation. They do not care about the patient, the doctor let alone the consequences of their doings. They took a…

I'll take a mysterious and amorphous future risk of privacy violations any day over current chronic pain.

It’s not mysterious and amorphous. We have seen the results with social media for what? 15 years now? This is a known issue with clear parallels. And health data is way riskier to have floating around.

Re: ChatGPT Health is a marketplace, guess who is the product?

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any proof they don't? Do you have any proof the "AI System" that they use to filter out candidates doesn't "accidentally" access data ? Are you willing to bet that Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, won't sell access to that information? Also, in some cases: they absolutely do. Try to get hired in Palantir and see how much they know about your browsing history. Anything related to national security or requi…

As if any company that did that is a company I would want to work for. For instance back when I was interviewing at startups and other companies where I was going to be a strategic hire, I would casually mention how much I enjoyed spending time on my hobbies and with my family on the weekend so companies wouldn’t even extend an offer if they wanted someone “passionate” who would work 60 hours a week and be on call.

I certainly understand this perspective.

But is it really so hard to imagine a world where your individual choice to "opt-out" or work for companies that don't use that info is a massive detriment to your individual life? It doesn't have to be every single company doing it for you to have no _practical_ choice about it (if you want to make market rate for your services.)

Re: ChatGPT Health is a marketplace, guess who is the product?

#155
post #150
post #12

ChatGPT has made a material difference in my ability to understand health problems, test results, and to communicate with doctors effectively. My wife and I were talking last night about how helpful it was in 2025. I hope that it continues to be good at this. I want regulators to keep an eye on this and make smart laws. I don't want it to go away, as its value is massive in my life. (One example, if you are curious:…

It can be helpful, but also untrustworthy. My mother-in-law has been struggling with some health challenges the past couple of months. My wife (her daughter) works in the medical field and has been a great advocate for her mother. This whole time I've also been peppering ChatGPT with questions, and in turn I discuss matters with my wife based on this. I think it was generally correct in a lot of its assertions, but a…

Totally agree, it can be a bit of an echo chamber. I had an infection post-dental-work. Bing Chat insisted I had swollen lymph nodes from a cold that would resolve on their own, then decided I had a salivary gland infection. After a follow-up with a real-world ENT, it was (probably accurately) diagnosed as a soft-tissue infection that had completely resolved on two rounds of antibiotics. The AI never raised that possibility, whereas the ENT and dentist examined me and reached that conclusion immediately.

I do think AI is great for discussing some health things (like "how should I interpret this report or test result?"), but it's too echo chamber-y and suggestion-prone for accurate diagnosis right now.

Re: ChatGPT Health is a marketplace, guess who is the product?

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insurance that is maximally responsive to patient health changes in terms of cost (ie making healthier people pay less) ends up being an inefficient way of just having people pay for their healthcare directly. And it naturally means the people with highest premiums are the least likely to be able to afford it (the elderly, the disabled, those with chronic conditions that make them less likely to maintain high earning…

The obvious retort to this is: "If I focused on my health, ate clean and exercised daily, why should I also be subsidizing Billy "video-games-are-my-exercise" fatass's chronic health conditions?" This is why there is a hyperfixation on shifting blame away from (failing) individuals. The logic breaks when Billy has to admit he just hates exercising. And yes, before you comment, I know "maybe Billy has (condition outsi…

It also fails to take into account the fact that eating clean and exercising daily doesn't eliminate your risk of getting cancer at age 40 or having your car's brakes fail randomly.

Re: ChatGPT Health is a marketplace, guess who is the product?

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As if any company that did that is a company I would want to work for. For instance back when I was interviewing at startups and other companies where I was going to be a strategic hire, I would casually mention how much I enjoyed spending time on my hobbies and with my family on the weekend so companies wouldn’t even extend an offer if they wanted someone “passionate” who would work 60 hours a week and be on call.

I certainly understand this perspective. But is it really so hard to imagine a world where your individual choice to "opt-out" or work for companies that don't use that info is a massive detriment to your individual life? It doesn't have to be every single company doing it for you to have no _practical_ choice about it (if you want to make market rate for your services.)

I live my life by the “Ben Kenobi” principal. I’m 51, when things go completely to shit, I’ll just go out and live as a hermit somewhere.

Re: ChatGPT Health is a marketplace, guess who is the product?

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could also list plenty of horror stories where people went to medical professionals and got screwed over. There is this myth that people can go to doctors and get perfect attention and treatment. Reality is far from that

There’s the concept of “personal advocacy” when receiving healthcare. Unfortunately, you’ll only get the best outcomes if you continually seek out treatment with diligence and patience. But framing it as a “myth [of] perfect attention and treatment” sounds a bit like delegitimizing the entire healthcare industry in a way that makes me raise my eyebrow.

Yes, there's been a tension between personal advocacy and the system for a long time. Doctors roll there eyes when a patient mentions they self diagnosed on WebMD. LLM's will accelerate self diagnosis immensely. This has the potential to help patients, but it is just a starting point. Of course, it should be verified from actual trained doctors.

Re: ChatGPT Health is a marketplace, guess who is the product?

#160
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a US citizen, so a genuine question: do US health insurance companies have a track record of passing on such savings to consumers? That has not been my impression as an outside observer.

Ostensibly, the Affordable Care Act was supposed to reduce the average family's premiums by $2,500 a year. When that didn't happen, the story changed to that number being how much more premiums would have risen. Insurance premiums have only gone up as far as I can remember, though there's a ton of variables at play here. Inflation is an obvious one, plus continual introduction of more and more costly treatments- biol…

> Insurance premiums have only gone up as far as I can remember, though there's a ton of variables at play here.

An interesting thing about rising health costs is that it has happened at roughly similar rates in most first world countries for the last 50+ years.

For example in 1990 the UK, FR, and US were paying 2.0, 2.2, and 2.6 times their 1980 costs per capita. By 2000 that was 4.1, 4.1, and 4.2. By 2018 (the last year I had data for when I calculated this a few years ago) it was 10.6, 7.5, and 10.2.

Here's the 2000 to 2018 increase for those and some others: DE, FR, CA, IT, JP, UK, US were 2.1, 1.8, 2.0, 1.7, 2.6, 2.6, 2.3.

When politicians in the US talk about rising health care costs they usually put the blame on recent policies from opposing politicians. That so many first world countries with so many different health care systems all have seen similar increases for the last 50+ years suggests that it is due to something they all have in common and that government policy doesn't affect it much.

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