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Wait why are so many people shitting on this idea. This seems to me to be exactly what people are always comparing about, "big companies only care about the bot

• appleflaxen 7y ago
  Right here there is a private company trying to help ease the homeless problem That's not true: they are making an investment in housing, based on economical considerations, that they expect to cover by reducing the health liabilities of the covered individuals. I don't think this means that they should be shit on, or that the situation is bad. On the contrary: it looks like health externalities (homelessness) have been appropriately internalized, and it is enabling correct match-up between resources and needs. But it just sounds silly when you say they are "trying to help ease the homeless problem"
  • hpoe 7y ago
    Sure maybe their motive is economic rather than altruistic but to quote my mother "if it's stupid and it works it isn't that stupid" I mean Steve Jobs didn't care about anything but the profits when launching the iPhone but it was arguably a significant factor in getting us to the state where we are at today where pretty much everyone has an internet enabled smart phone. It just sometimes there is the group think on HN that all companies and big corporations are always evil and are some sort of malevolent force and so we can't give them credit for any good they do because they don't meet our moral standard. I mean that's like saying Lincoln's role in freeing the slaves was fundamentally evil because he didn't also extend everyone the same protections enshrined in the Civil Rights act. Ultimately in my years of software engineering I have become convinced that big huge grand programs are almost always bloated ineffective and full of bugs whereas most real value derives from incremental improvements.
    • 49531 7y ago
      It isn't about good or evil, it's about the fact that relying on large corporations' profit interests to solve public ills is a fools errand. So, sure, the public might get some good from a corporation's program, but as soon as the profit dries up, the corporation will move on. This isn't a moral thing, it's just a thing profit-driven organizations do. People don't want welfare infrastructure to be contingent on a corporations ability to profit, because in the end it will be a fickle thing.
      • afarrell 7y ago
        Will it be more fickle than a politician's ability to get votes? The answer here is probably "yes". But the question is worth asking. If we can construct some system where the profit motive does motivate ongoing maintenance of welfare infrastructure, thats a win.
        • 49531 7y ago
          Not only will it be more fickle, there is 0 accountability from the public, and the corporation has unilateral control over the programs existence. Contrast that with entrenched public goods like schools, libraries, police and fire departments. Most politicians don't have the ability to suspend those programs if the quarterly numbers are low. So yes, private welfare infrastructure is inherently less stable than public. > If we can construct some system where the profit motive does motivate ongoing maintenance of welfare infrastructure, thats a win. There are some things that just aren't profitable, and never will be, like rural mail delivery. Not to be dramatic or anything, but I think if the last 30 years have taught us anything, it is that the more we try to solve problems with profit driven organizations the more anemic our society will become.
      • danShumway 7y ago
        Will this effort make it harder to build public infrastructure in the future? I'm sympathetic to the argument you're making, and I've even used it a couple of times when talking about stuff like browser standards, Facebook Basic Internet, etc... It's not a dumb argument. But at the same time, homeless people don't care about your theoretical utopia. They need help right now, and there's a very real cost to saying, "nobody should help this person suffering until we can do it right." There's a balancing act here. Unless private care is going to make it harder to solve homelessness in the future, we should embrace it as a band-aide solution while we work on public infrastructure. Because let's be honest, public solutions like guaranteed housing are likely pretty far in the future -- I don't see a lot of evidence that there is enough political momentum right now to make that happen. The evidence I see suggests Medicaid has a decent chance of even getting worse in the immediate future. We need band-aide solutions right now.
  • kingkawn 7y ago
    The argument that helping others will lead both to reduced social costs and improved economic participation is ripe to be made. These companies may be stumbling onto it through trial and error, but the economic world where people are not dying on the street will be more productive for us all. Whatever path gets us there gets us there.
  • EricE 7y ago
    > That's not true: they are making an investment in housing, based on economical considerations, that they expect to cover by reducing the health liabilities of the covered individuals. And why, exactly, is that a problem? Not sure what planet you live on, but here in the real world economics is the primary motivating factor for all societies. > But it just sounds silly when you say they are "trying to help ease the homeless problem" Why is it silly to say that? It's EXACTLY what they are trying to do since it directly affects their bottom line. They have contracts with the state to provide medicare - this let's them do it far more efficiently. If they can also do it while dramatically improving the lives of those they serve why shouldn't they get credit for that too? It just boggles my mind that the Automatic assumption in this country is that all corporations or profit motives are immediate evil/immoral. Talk about real silly ideas...
• eternalny1 7y ago
  > Right here there is a private company trying to help ease the homeless problem and everyone is just shitting on them for not doing the way they think they should or are getting angry at them for making a profit on it. They aren't doing this because they care about the homeless. They are doing it simply because they promised 13% to 15% annual returns and that Wall Street is unhappy with their Medicaid margins. They said it themselves. They ran some numbers and realized that housing people made their shareholders money. This is not the incentive you want to solve homelessness.
  • magashna 7y ago
    If it helps the homeless and is cost effective, who cares what their motivations are?
  • i_am_proteus 7y ago
    Right... they found a way to economically optimize their product, which is to make/keep people healthy. The result is that the people mentioned are in better health, and that costs are lower. Of course the company gets to keep some profit as a reward for figuring this out. That's how a market economy works!
  • v64 7y ago
    At some point you have to accept that the best is the enemy of the good. If housing the homeless makes shareholders money, then I say that's an acceptable tradeoff to give people homes. It's not a permanent solution, and it's not an ideal solution, but if it's putting roofs over peoples' heads, it's a move in the positive direction.
    • licebmi__at__ 7y ago
      Except, this not a move in any direction. Leaving people living in the streets have been profitable so we left people living in the streets, now is more profitable to provide housing, if tomorrow is no longer profitable to leave them on the streets again, we will do so, because we maintained the same posture of just chasing profit. And despite what GP might think, I welcome this as a nice way to ease people suffering, and I don't think "all corporations are evil". I just believe that people having a roof should not be tied to profit, and I disagree with the ideology pushed to our throats about how corporations chasing profit is good for everyone.
• throwaway35784 7y ago
  This is profitable goodness. This is what we should strive for as a society. I imagine it was quite a battle for the people who suggested this strategy against the naysayers. Listen to them here in this thread. I hear envy. Envy of the good. I applaud the insurance company and the employees. It's so hard to do good things in the world today and they found a way in this capitalist mess we have created.
  • altacc 7y ago
    > This is profitable goodness. This is what we should strive for as a society. Many people, including myself, would like society to take action because it's the right thing to do in of itself, not because it's profitable. We shouldn#t be having to find a profit motive for what should be a charitable act.
    • tathougies 7y ago
      But if there is a profit motive towards what would be an act of charity then we should be relieved because profit means this will exist without the need to rile up public morality which is way more fickle than profit.
    • bzbarsky 7y ago
      First, just to get this out of the way, I feel that taking action due to a profit motive is better than not taking action at all. Do we at least agree on that? Second, getting people to take action is all about incentives. Those incentives might be profit motive, internal motivation (e.g. feeling righteous), etc, etc. It seems like our job, as a society, is to construct incentives that lead to the actions we want to see. There are various ways of doing that, and profit is definitely one of them that has the nontrivial benefit of being broadly applicable: lots of people are at least somewhat incentivized by money. Now there are all sorts of ways incentives can go awry, and that includes profit incentives, so we do need to watch out of that. But apart from that it doesn't seem like there's anything inherently wrong with using a profit incentive to produce the action we want.
      • 7y ago
• asdfman123 7y ago
  I think this is a positive development, but to me it highlights how sad it is that so much of America sees investment in its own people as "wasteful spending." Protecting the most vulnerable people and ensuring people don't fall into the trap of poverty is an investment that should occur at the governmental level. There are many such governmental investments that would alleviate serious long-term problems. My biggest frustration with the American government and American business-oriented culture in general is a lack of long-term thinking. We know that "a stitch in time saves nine," but instead we decide to go the nine stitches route. Put more nerdily, people do not properly respect the implications of exponential growth. “A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit” -- Greek proverb
  • AlexB138 7y ago
    America makes more sense when you consider that Civil Society (as in the third sector) is mostly dead, and what is left is extremely fragmented. There is no cohesion, very little shared culture, and a lot of outright animosity between groups. They aren't countrymen, they just happen to live in the same legal boundaries. When people in this mindset see homeless they don't think "This is a member of my society that is suffering", they see an Other. Put another way, plenty of old men want to plant trees, they just only want their own group using the shade.
    • asdfman123 7y ago
      Racism. It's mostly driven by racism but we're not allowed to call it that.
      • AlexB138 7y ago
        While probably part of it, I don't personally believe that to be a primary cause. America is probably at or near the least racist it has been in its history. I think the entities driving narratives that make people believe racism is rampant, and cause people to make flippant accusations of racism, have more to do with it.
      • 7y ago
• andrei_says_ 7y ago
  Why does a health insurer have more money than what they know what to do with? How were they able to extract so much wealth if they were providing a competitive service? Why don’t they just lower premiums so that more people can afford to see a doctor? Or provide better coverage so fewer people would go bankrupt when diagnosed with an “expensive” condition? Why is buying real estate a better investment than saving lives?
  • mantoto 7y ago
    Why do you believe that they are only working on real estate? Why do you think they are idiots?
  • iNate2000 7y ago
    >... providing a competitive service They are not providing a competitive service. When I get my health coverage from work, I only have one or two options. And the prices are already set. >...just lower premiums In effect, that's what Medicaid does. >...provide better coverage... expensive condition This program is preventing the expensive conditions. That's better for everyone. I'd much rather not get sick than have enough money to pay for treating the sickness. > Why is buying real estate a better investment than saving lives? Because you get the same outcome (healthier people) for less money. It's win-win.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
• A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
  The idea is not bad and some good will result from it. I think people may object to this as little more than a PR campaign ( I am not sure if you noticed, but insurance companies fare only a little better than the body of congress when it comes to public opinion ). In short, they do some tax deductible charity from money I paid them ( or saved from not paying my claim ). Yay. All of a sudden, I feel so much more predisposed to not dislike healthcare industry. But to your point, few people think not dealing with homelessness is good. I would just feel better if healthcare industry tended to my needs first..especially since I pay them to do just that. edit. added anti-industry rant, changed some spelling
• qrbLPHiKpiux 7y ago
  Income redistribution. Your health care premiums, deductibles are paying for this.