2 ms·
It's kind of depressing that the US economy and US healthcare industry is so fucked that it's cheaper for a megacorporation (Walmart, Amazon) to set up a privat
by saulrh 4y ago
It's kind of depressing that the US economy and US healthcare industry is so fucked that it's cheaper for a megacorporation (Walmart, Amazon) to set up a private little single-payer state inside itself. That's really what this is - if you own your own doctors, you can close the payment loop, remove the entire insurance industry from the equation and all of its misaligned incentives and bureaucratic overhead. Kind of inspiring, in a way, that we're so advanced technologically and organizationally that it's in striking range for non-state actors, but also terrifying.
We continue to live in the worst cyberpunk utopia.
- ctvo 4y ago> We continue to live in the worst cyberpunk utopia. I sometimes think Bezos doesn’t get into politics because he’s saving himself from a conflict of interest when he becomes president of the corpo-state of Amazonia. Oh, and he’s also not that charismatic.
- drc500free 4y agoIs this significantly different from HMOs, which have existed for at least half a century? Kaiser has been doing basically this for a while now.
- giraffe_lady 4y agoIs a canoe different from a speed boat? In some ways not at all, in some quite a bit. Depends on what you're trying to explain or do with it. The fundamental similarities don't override the differences and in this case I think "it's owned by a union-busting monopolistic megacorporation that is currently redefining labor relations and probably not in a good way" is enough to make it valuable to consider it a different thing.
- drc500free 4y agoKaiser runs massive complex hospital systems, does $93B in revenue, and employs over 200,000 people. One Medical runs a handful of standalone primary care offices with bougie waiting rooms, does $250M in revenue, and employs 3,000 people. It's something to keep an eye on, but if there's a canoe in this analogy it's the one Amazon just bought. Maybe they can turn it into a full navy one day.
- dehrmann 4y ago> a private little single-payer state inside itself Lots of big companies self-insure. The plan is administered by someone else, but the company pays the real cost. What you're describing is a single-payer HMO.
- case 4y agoFwiw, this is how Kaiser Permanente started. Henry Kaiser needed healthcare for his shipyard workers during WWII, so he brought in a physician to start and scale up the program in-house. Nowadays Kaiser is the insurer, hospital system, and healthcare provider for millions of Californians. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiser_Permanente https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiser_Permanente