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

411–420 of 495 posts

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

#411

Post by alwa »

Animats wrote: post #8

"The campaigns with the biggest apparent international reach were under the name of an organisation called Chance Letikva (Chance for Hope, in English) - registered in Israel and the US." Chance Letikva is registered with the US IRS as a charity. They've filed a Form 990. Location is Brooklyn, NY. [1] Address is listed. It's a small house. It's also incorporated as CHANCE LETIKVA, INC. in New York State. Address matc…

The behavior that this article outlines is outrageous. But it makes me uncomfortable for this to be the kind of place where anonymous strangers self-investigate lurid allegations against random accused, no matter how disturbing the allegations.

Most of us don’t have the tools or the time to do it properly, at least on here; and that can end badly [0]. It rarely achieves a thoughtful considered outcome, and there are other places to do that kind of thing if you want to—some of those communities, like Bellingcat, seem pretty well-practiced in their methodologies, and their findings seem to have accordingly high impact.

[0] e.g. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-22214511 … and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_of_Sunil_Tripathi

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

#412

Post by vkou »

nxm wrote: post #83
vkou wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not non-productive individuals who don't do any work can own the means of production and reap the majority of the economic surplus from it is somewhat tangential to the question of who pays for whose healthcare. There are plenty of capitalist nations that provide public healthcare on a large spectrum of coverage and quality.

With 2 month long plus waits for basic scans in countries like Canada

In the US, twenty day wait list for a broken toe, seven month wait list for a neurologist, five month wait list for a deviated septum surgery, and good luck finding a PCP taking new patients.

This quality of service costs me and my wife ~$23,000/year.

Sure, we can walk into urgent care and get seen. I've also never had a problem walking into a walk-in clinic in Canada, either. The clinic's lobby and the doctor's car in the parking lot isn't as nice over there, though.

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

#413

Post by cluckindan »

cheschire wrote: post #286
cluckindan wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed! However, law is not a definition of moral right and wrong; rather, it is a spatiotemporally varying definition of societal and judicial rights, permissions and restrictions of conduct which are usually grounded in the locally prevailing morals. Law in a democratic society is a manifestation of so-called social contracts considered binding for members of that society. However, law in a non-democratic society c…

It’s subjective. It’s always subjective. A person can convince themselves they’re right to conduct all sorts of heinous acts if they simply alter their perspective enough. Morals are fundamental to the process.

Laws aren’t subjective, though. So clearly there is a fundamental difference between laws and morals.

Could we even say laws are the society’s objective morals?

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

#414

Post by tclancy »

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.

Why does every discussion have to wind up with a digression thread about how "real" or, even worse, "basic" journalism is something from a sepia-tinged golden age of muckrakers getting blitzed with Dorothy Parker? People are trying. There's lots of shıt masquerading as journalism, but this ain't it.

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

#415

Post by TehCorwiz »

bko wrote: post #405
Retric wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re confusing ideology with the way the world actually operates. The general public doesn’t have enough information to make informed decisions when it comes to healthcare. This alone completely removes the usual market forces from providing any benefit when it comes to healthcare. Cancer treatments don’t inherently cost that much money, the systems to ensure people are actually getting useful treatments are expens…

> The general public doesn’t have enough information to make informed decisions when it comes to healthcare. This alone completely removes the usual market forces from providing any benefit when it comes to healthcare. Why is it always "the general public" and not "I". Do you have enough information about decisions? Can I take away some of your rights? No, of course not. Everyone else is dumb except me. I'm sorry but…

The whole "anonymous bureaucrat" shtick doesn't land anymore. The purpose of having long-term non-political staff is so that operations don't change on a whim when some rogue director comes in and wants a second Ferrari. The reason government spends more AND is paradoxically more efficient is because most of the work of those bureaucrats is tracking, reporting, and reconciliation. That's the whole deal. Congress passes laws and in those laws is usually an obscene and near impossible amount of auditing.

I trust government staff far more than the decision of unregulated, greedy corporations who literally exist to extract the most money from whatever process they're trying to sell you.

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

#417

Post by ryandrake »

bko wrote: post #406
k1musab1 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time and time again large competing forces in the market are found to have colluded instead of directly competing with each other to drive price/cost down. What is it that still makes you believe that two (or n-number) of providers won't collude to charge an astronomical amount for a life-saving treatment?

Because if something sucks, someone comes up with something better and sells it for a profit. This is the history of pretty much every other good or service that is not heavily influenced by regulation and artificial barriers to entry

> Because if something sucks, someone comes up with something better and sells it for a profit.

This is basically a religious belief at this point. It's how a perfectly ideal free market might work, but we don't have any of these, especially in healthcare.

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

#418

Post by IncreasePosts »

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.

Do any real* societies have health care systems where everyone who needs cancer treatment gets the best available?

* by real, I mean large societies that aren't propped up by some bizarre economic quirk...eg maybe the sultan of brunei can personally pay for everyone bruneian citizen to get the best cancer treatment. But that's not a scalable solution

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

#420

Post by morellt »

55555 wrote: post #285
throwaway198846 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe all countries should automatically extradiate every person any other country demands? Or that there should be a limit on such process?

Israel is a special case.

Our greatest ally
Post reply on HN