4 ms·

It's inefficient and not living to its potential

• bandrami 9mo ago
  And "disruption" (a pretty ill-defined term) is the solution to that?
  • __loam 9mo ago
    The solution is single payer. Any attempt to solve this with technological band aids is completely futile. We know what the solution is because we see it work in every other developed nation. We don't have it because a class of billionaire doners doesn't want to pay into the system that allowed them to become fabulously wealthy. People who are claiming AI is the solution to healthcare access and affordability are delusional or lying to you.
    • gradus_ad 9mo ago
      There are good reasons to think single payer systems are not the answer. The numerous documented inefficiencies and inconveniences they suffer from don't need repeating here. And many single payer systems around the world only appear to work as well as they do because the US effectively subsidizes medical costs through its own out of control prices.
      • __loam 9mo ago
        We'd rather have medical bankruptcy than a functional system.
      • ikr678 9mo ago
        Maybe for R&D but your outsized costs are also due to your liability environment and direct incentives against preventative healthcare.
• plagiarist 9mo ago
  The inefficiency is the buying of yachts for billionaires.
  • eru 9mo ago
    Compare: Google's founders can buy all the yachts they could possibly eat, yet Google Searches are offered for free. If we could get healthcare to that level, it would be great. For a less extreme example: Wal-Mart and Amazon have made plenty of people very rich, and they charge customers for their goods; but their entrance into the markets have arguable brought down prices.
    • __loam 9mo ago
      And Google search, a service on the level of a public utility, has been degrading noticeably for years in the face of shareholders demanding more and more returns.
      • eru 9mo ago
        How is Google Search a public utility?
        • __loam 9mo ago
          Comparing something to a public utility is not me saying it's literally a public utility. Google runs a monopolistic service that is essential to a lot of our public life, in a segment that has high cost of entry and infrastructure cost. They make the service worse to make more money. It should be a regulated utility like electricity or railroads, we should have a public alternative like the post office is to UPS, or it should be nationalized. The situation gets more dire when you consider their browser monopoly.
          • eru 9mo ago
            Other search engines exist. Bing is right there, and Microsoft is more than willing to eat the high cost of entry and infrastructure cost. > It should be a regulated utility like electricity or railroads, we should have a public alternative like the post office is to UPS, or it should be nationalized. I agree that electricity and railroads should be regulated like Google Search. It's really weird that snail mail in the US is a government monopoly. When even social democratic Germany managed to privatise them. > The situation gets more dire when you consider their browser monopoly. Don't a lot of people in the US use iPhones? They don't ship with Chrome as the default browser, do they? (And yes, Safari is built on top of the same open source engine as Chrome. But you can hardly call using the same open source project a 'monopoly'. Literally anyone can fork it.) There's also plenty of other browsers available.
• reaperducer 9mo ago
  It's inefficient and not living to its potential Yeah, because we saw what a great job the tech bros did making government more efficient.
• shaky-carrousel 9mo ago
  That's because it's incredibly corrupted, not because it needs disruption. Unless the disruption comes in the form of jail time.