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

Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised for their treatment

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 495 posts

Re: Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised for their treatment

#341

Post by interstice »

mlrtime wrote: post #203
jdranczewski wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article says they visited both the US and Israel registration addresses and didn't find the organisation's offices. I was impressed by the amount of "on the ground digging" by the journalists here!

It's really not that hard to find someone to go to check a address, redditors do this all the time. It should be expected as basic journalism, especially with high claims.

If only this was the actual standard for journalism and not copy pasting half understood content with additional spin.

Re: Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised for their treatment

#342

Post by binary132 »

philipallstar wrote: post #304
binary132 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m the farthest thing from a communist, but what makes you think public funding cannot be given to drug research?

It can be, but who decides what to work on? Capitalism puts risk and reward off to the side, to be done by experts. Why take the risk if you have no reward, and, conversely, why give someone a load of money to allocate if there's no risk for them if it fails?

the problem is your framing of the problem, not the questions you posed. it seems to me like you’re assuming that the only metrics for risk and reward are profit and cost. let me put it this way: do you find there to be any intrinsic value to the invention of antibiotics, or is such a development only worth the money that it can make for its inventor / discoverer? do you think that the cost of developing such technologies is worth it even if it does not gain any material income?

Let’s also imagine the other side of the equation. Can you not imagine any penalty or cost other than bankruptcy? Let’s say you are forced to allocate $1 million per year to research. is the only cost function you can imagine based on the risk of default?

Re: Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised for their treatment

#343

Post by ivape »

input_sh wrote: post #278
ivape wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm. But who can audit the reporting? Evidently, this looks like something they can manipulate. Is the bottom line roughly: Money received: 1000 Money used for good: 800 Labor: 200 Is that it? Because I can assure you, that will not turn out well.

> But who can audit the reporting? The same people that audit your taxes, roughly with the same consequences for lying. Except the IRS is far more likely to send unannounced auditors to NGOs than they are to send them to for-profit companies or individuals. It's more of a hassle to get/retain tax-free status than it is to simply pay your taxes like everyone else (as it should be). > Is that it? Let me guess: you have…

Caught me :)

Re: Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised for their treatment

#344

Post by [deleted] »

bko wrote: post #312
tchalla wrote: post #41

The root cause of the problem is that parents and children need to raise funds for cancer treatment in the first place.

There's a benefit to having a service tied to the individual receiving the service. For starters it put price pressure and competition on providing the service. When someone else is paying for something you don't have a signal of efficacy, in terms of pricing or quality. To put another way, if I were facing some terminal illness I would want to have full control of picking the service even if it costs money. Sure, I…

[deleted]

Re: Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised for their treatment

#345

Post by zwnow »

trollbridge wrote: post #326
zwnow wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who am I to judge what they do with their money? I couldnt possibly know if they are allergic to something. Also not every homeless person is an addict. Even beggars can have agency over their resources. An addiction is not for me to solve, first things first should be to cover their basic needs, only then you can work on an addiction. Money is the easiest thing to give.

You should know that for an addict, the “next fix” is the first “need” that gets met. I am not convinced it is ethical to supply money to a pipeline to drug dealers.

I dont give a shit about a pipeline of drug dealers but I give a shit about humans. They are victims of a state that let them down. Them freezing to death or whatever doesn't show them drug dealers, its simply ignoring a person in need. But doesn't surprise me that people in a tech forum have little to zero empathy or pull some tinfoil hat theory out of their ass just so they can justify not giving anyone anything.

Re: Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised for their treatment

#346

Post by phatfish »

LadyCailin wrote: post #99
zaphirplane wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does clicking on the ad cost the spammer a lot of money

Yes, which is one of two reasons why I use a blocker called adnauseum. It an adv locker that “clicks” on every single ad it sees, as well as hides it from my view. This makes my ad profile useless, and also costs them money.

The question is, is the scammer taking donations from kids with cancer or Google the more worthy entity to profit from the situation? It's a tough decision.

Re: Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised for their treatment

#347

Post by mda »

EvgeniyZh wrote: post #340
mihalycsaba wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I'll start. Is it antisemitic to question why so many scammers are fleeing to Israel?

How many? What are the top 3 countries scammers flee to?

You didn't answer his question

Re: Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised for their treatment

#348

Post by buellerbueller »

interstice wrote: post #341
mlrtime wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not that hard to find someone to go to check a address, redditors do this all the time. It should be expected as basic journalism, especially with high claims.

If only this was the actual standard for journalism and not copy pasting half understood content with additional spin.

If what you are typically reading is

>[copypasta] half understood content with additional spin

then what you are reading is not journalism.

Re: Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised for their treatment

#349

Post by coredog64 »

hermanzegerman wrote: post #250
_heimdall wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't say how you would fund it, only what form of insurance is in place. If the US were to shift to that model today, a country already heavily in debt would have to either take on more debt PR increase revenues in a manner that they wouldn't have been willing to in order to fund our already growing debts. The debate over whether public or private healthcare is better is all well and good, but first we should…

A Single-Payer-System would also be cheaper in the US. Nobody expenses as much on administrative cost, nobody pays so much as a % of GDP on Healthcare as you, still you have the worst health outcomes of all developed nations. Taking into account both the costs of coverage expansion and the savings that would be achieved through the Medicare for All Act, we calculate that a single-payer, universal health-care system i…

You are, of course, aware that the current US single payer system (Medicare) subcontracts their administration to private health insurance companies? And that the "overhead" typically discussed when talking about Medicare doesn't include said companies but is instead only the overhead of what it takes to shovel money from the IRS to private insurance companies?

No, this is not Medicare Advantage, in which Medicare just directly pays private health insurance premiums for enrollees.

Re: Children with cancer scammed out of millions fundraised for their treatment

#350

Post by hermanzegerman »

duskdozer wrote: post #302
hermanzegerman wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a treatment isn't approved yet, you can usually submit a request for getting it paid. You need to show that it has a chance of working (literature etc...) and it will be reviewed by a doctor from the "Medical Service" which is independent from the Health Insurers. If they decide it should be paid, it will be paid (which is most of the time the case). Otherwise you can go through the social courts. (No court costs…

Interesting. Do people win in any significant number of cases, or is it more like the "appeals" process in for-profit systems, where it's supposedly possible to win but generally does not happen?

From my limited experience it usually already gets approved by the Medical Service.

Especially within the University Hospitals who administer these treatments they already have the experience how to write these applications and know their counterparts

Post reply on HN