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Hacker News Folks Get Long Overdue Thanks
- mathattack 13y agoWow - that a tear jerker that's hard to respond to. Glad to hear he is well!
- kenshiro_o 13y agoI am very happy for you! It's amazing what a community can do when its focus is directed towards a single goal.
- harrytuttle 13y agoSpot on. If only all of humanity did this to each other.
- sgt 13y agoWell done to HN. You cared.
- zhemao 13y agoWhat's with all the extra periods in the title?
- 542458 13y agoiPhone keyboard is my bet. Two taps of the space bar (easy enough to do accidentally) gets you " ." and capitalizes the next letter.
- dmak 13y agoI honestly thought this was going to be a SEO success story when I saw the white hat vs black hat picture.
- jaggederest 13y agoThe real thanks goes to the oncologists. I'm pretty sure they would have shrugged off the monetary losses to save a life.
- dfc 13y agoI wholeheartedly agree that the oncologists deserve a lot of praise/gratitude for their work. That gratitude is precisely the reason why I disagree with the latter half of your statement. I think it is unfair to to suggest that they would have accepted a monetary loss. Nobody visits an oncology specialist because life is wonderful. Every patient is somebody's mother, brother or spouse and every patient is facing an uphill battle. Doctors deserve a paycheck to feed their families and pay off medical school debt just like everyone else.
- jaggederest 13y agoOf course they do. But if he'd only raised $30k, they'd have gone "Welp, not enough, guess you're just going to have to die"? I seriously doubt it. You're going to serve the patients you can serve and get the recompense you can - people without insurance are going to bring some losses, but you don't just let them die.
- dfc 13y ago" people without insurance are going to bring some losses, but you don't just let them die." Are you aware of the health insurance debate/disaster in the US? How long can doctors operate at a loss? I must say that you are very fortunate if you do not know someone who has died of cancer and was unable to see/pay every specialist they could fit in to their final months days. People die of cancer all the time wishing they had the money to see the ______ oncology specialist.
- jaggederest 13y agoI've actually worked with health insurance billing. The way it works is that they bill ridiculously large amounts, which nobody without insurance can pay. They know this. The insurance companies negotiate it, other people pay what they can, and it all more or less works out in the end. I'd much, much prefer to see a single payer system. Seeing every specialist is different than being in treatment with a doctor and having them cut you off because you can't pay. It's very rare I hear of a doctor going "well it's a shame you can't afford to pay for this surgery" - nearly always they do it, bill it, and accept the losses. Hospitals recover less than 20% from people without insurance.
- relaunched 13y agoI remember when this story was first posted. It's not often in life that someone gets a happy ending. It's a moment we can all revel in.
- nwenzel 13y agoGreat story of compassion and triumph. So... How do we make it scale? Is it mandatory insurance? Insurance doesn't make everything affordable, but it probably wild have been helpful. Though maybe the co-pay would have been $50k. Universal tax-payer funded insurance? The term "tax payer" is interesting because politicians and pundits forget that we're all tax payers in one form or another. Granted some pay more, some are net consumers of govt services. But tax payers mean us, and those with more earned income more than those with less. I think the main difference between taxes and donation is choice. Single-payer or government provided healthcare? Pretty sure that no one would identify the government as the picture perfect example of efficiency. Plus, putting elected officials or their appointees in charge of handing out goods and services doesnt seem to be sustainable. Not that putting profit seeking entities in charge has yielded the ideal result. Making drug providers, healthcare providers and everyone else in that supply chain non-profit? Profit has enormous motivational powers. Not always for good. But it is pretty amazing what can be accomplished by organizations setup to create wealth. Big Data? Sorry, I couldn't resist. Well, lets use that as a proxy for innovation. It would seem that greater opportunity for innovation would help. Lower barriers to trying new drugs, procedures, diet, treatments would allow for potentially lower cost solutions to be created. Separating health care from your job? Of your insurer only needs you to be healthy until you find a new job, there's not much in incentive for long-term healthcare and preventative screenings to identify tumors and other problems before they become an expensive problem. Though that would seem to be an arguement in favor of a single payer system. Sorry, I don't have an answer. Hopefully, great stories like the OP continue. But if we don't make it scale then we haven't really done all we possibly can do.
- SeanDav 13y agoI don't begin to understand the US health system (I live in the UK with its National Health), but didn't Obama try bring in compulsory health insurance to counteract just this sort of thing and it was defeated?
- Moto7451 13y agoNot defeated, it just hasn't rolled out fully yet. States are figuring out how to implement everything, and of course the partisan foes of his health plan stage votes in Congress to repeal it (which never pass) every month or so.
- foobarbazqux 13y agoIt's great that people here helped him out and that a life was saved, but it's also sad that some US citizens - in this case a veteran - have to beg for healthcare.
- rbanffy 13y agoIt's a tragedy when anyone, anywhere, dies because he/she cannot afford or has no access to adequate medical care. We have a very long way to go.
- barking 13y agoHN : 1 USA health system : 0
- twstws 13y agoThis is truly a wonderful story. But it makes you wonder how many others in a similar situation weren't so fortunate. I lived in the US for two years, and I never understood the aversion to government healthcare. The Canadian system is far from perfect, and I know there are failures. But it's still a lot better than soliciting for online charity on a case by case basis. I'm impressed and humbled that it worked in this case. Just a little disturbed that it was necessary at all.
- Klinky 13y agoI am not sure this story is really about the need for socialized medicine. This is more about the need of specialist care and second opinions. If most doctors he saw determined that he most likely would not survive treatment, a socialized medical program may have very well denied payment for such treatments, and he would have had to resort to fundraising anyways. Maybe if the system was flexible, nimble and could make judgement calls on the side of compassion, it might work, but this is difficult in both public or private sector institutions.
- twstws 13y agoGood point. I do think the frequency of cases where the only option is private fund raising is much reduced under public systems.
- drpgq 13y agoWould this have worked out in Canada? I'm not sure. This seems like a special case where the US system works better.
- Crake 13y agoWhen I was obviously ill and in pain in class the other day (I have some ongoing health issues), I had one of my classmates tell me that Obamacare was going to "destroy the entire country" (exact words) because people like me having health insurance would make doctors become underpaid. I mentioned that my health insurance paid $40,000+ to a certain hospital lately, and he complained that it all went to the hospital, not the doctors. Then he went on some rant about how all the Canadians have to come down here for health care, and that was why you never hear of Canadians having surgery up there. I mentioned I had a Canadian friend who had a 3 part bowel surgery done recently, with very reasonable waiting times, and that of my several dozen Canadian friends, all but one was satisfied with their system, and he was just like, well, that's anecdotal, the statistics don't bear that out. That's not true at all, but he wouldn't hear of it. Even before my health problems started, I was pro-single payer. But people like my classmate are everywhere, and seem to think that health care SHOULD be expensive and hard to get. It's inordinately cruel. I've lived here all my life, but I'm actually moving out of state next month partially because my state's refusing to accept federal funds to cover my demographic next year, and I can't live without the medication I'm on. (Plus going to college out of state is cheaper than going to college in state (!). And they wonder why they have such a brain drain problem...)
- WasimBhai 13y agoI have often wondered given the kind of cost involved in good health care in USA, along with college fees, why don't more Americans move to Europe for health care and education where it is probably free most of the time? P.S.: I am from Pakistan.
- twstws 13y agoI suspect it is because those with the means to move are generally doing well enough to avoid the failings of the US system.
- krapp 13y agoMost Americans for whom healthcare and college costs are an issue probably can't afford to move to Europe either.
- drone 13y agoDon't most of those "free" public health care systems only apply to citizens? I recall a story about a foreigner in Germany having to pay for their care, even if the price was reduced. Non-emergency care in the UK, for example, requires legal residency, which may be hard to come by for someone too poor to afford health care in the US. France requires non-EU citizens to have insurance for care in France to get a visa, as I understand it. So, it's not just as easy as "let's pack up and move to the EU so we can get free healthcare tomorrow." Otherwise, you can imagine that every time a non-insured American got sick, they could compare the cost of getting new insurance to the cost of a plane ticket, and the plane ticket would win, I'm sure. =)
- rdouble 13y agoI've been to the doctor in Australia and Germany, and you do have to pay but the price was less than what I had to pay in the USA with insurance.
- WasimBhai 13y agoYes, of course. But then I am talking more about the whole life, not only in the case of emergency etc.. I mean for someone like me, from what I have read about American healthcare and education system, I will choose Europe any day over America. And even though, I really don't have that choice with my passport. But in the case of US citizens, the choice seems realtively easy.
- p4bl0 13y agoThis story makes me glad to live in France and have such a good healthcare system.
- snogglethorpe 13y agoAlso, you get to live in France... :]
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- denzil_correa 13y agoFeels good to be part of such a community.
- mixmax 13y agoWhile this is a great and heartbreaking story that makes me proud to be an active member of HN it's also a symptom of the totally broken US healthcare system. From wikipedia: The United States life expectancy of 78.4 years at birth, up from 75.2 years in 1990, ranks it 50th among 221 nations, and 27th out of the 34 industrialized OECD countries, down from 20th in 1990. Of 17 high-income countries studied by the National Institutes of Health in 2013, the United States had the highest or near-highest prevalence of infant mortality, heart and lung disease, sexually transmitted infections, adolescent pregnancies, injuries, homicides, and disability. Together, such issues place the U.S. at the bottom of the list for life expectancy. On average, a U.S. male can be expected to live almost four fewer years than those in the top-ranked country. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the United States spent more on health care per capita ($8,608), and more on health care as percentage of its GDP (17.9%), than any other nation in 2011. The Commonwealth Fund ranked the United States last in the quality of health care among similar countries, and notes U.S. care costs the most. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_State...
- dantheman 13y agoDamn lies and statistics - it's very difficult to compare countries on Infant Mortality because they have different definitions of alive. From wikipedia: The World Health Organization (WHO) defines a live birth as any born human being who demonstrates independent signs of life, including breathing, voluntary muscle movement, or heartbeat. Many countries, however, including certain European states and Japan, only count as live births cases where an infant breathes at birth, which makes their reported IMR numbers somewhat lower and raises their rates of perinatal mortality.[24] In Germany and Australia, requirements for live birth are even higher.[25][26] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_mortality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_mortality Not to say there aren't problems with the US healthcare system, but we need to stop these comparisons that are just not relevant.
- ewoodrich 13y agoFrom your article: "However, in 2009, the US CDC issued a report that stated that the American rates of infant mortality were affected by the United States' high rates of premature babies compared to European countries. It also outlined the differences in reporting requirements between the United States and Europe, noting that France, the Czech Republic, Ireland, the Netherlands, and Poland do not report all live births of babies under 500 g and/or 22 weeks of gestation.[34][35][dead link][36] The report concluded, however, that the differences in reporting are unlikely to be the primary explanation for the United States’ relatively low international ranking.[36]" Your argument, will perhaps partially correct, fails to properly explain the disparity in infant mortality (mostly due to unnecessary premature births) between the US and similar industrial countries.
- wozniacki 13y agoOften the least mentioned and discussed approach to solving the healthcare morass is the customer driver model of healthcare. David Goldhill is the author of Catastrophic Care: How American Health Care Killed My Father--and How We Can Fix It He advocates restricting the insurance system gradually and phasing out eventually, to increase accountability and vastly improve delivery standards. His father was afflicted by a series of hospital infections that compounded his condition and eventually killed him. When admitted in hospitals, he was thrice subjected to medical procedures that were meant for other people. This Atlantic article is eminently readable. How American Health Care Killed My Father http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2009/09/how-american-health-care-killed-my-father/307617/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2009/09/how-americ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_7qCpiS_ZQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_7qCpiS_ZQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A9y_FttOGE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A9y_FttOGE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0OAj9J_HW4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0OAj9J_HW4
- gojomo 13y agoAny link to the original thread?
- gojomo 13y agoThis one, from 330 days ago, looks like it was the main one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4430020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4430020
- shinratdr 13y agoNobody is turning this into a political issue. This IS a political issue. The only people who argue otherwise are Americans that selfishly support the current system in their country. Well bully for them. If they want people to stop "politicizing" issues that are entirely the result of the political game they play, then maybe they should stop being so selfish when a story like this comes up and some poor American has to pass around a hat so he can continue to live. The minor inconvenience of ruining some feel-good story for you is nothing compared to the blind eye you choose to turn in regards to everyone out there who has the exact same problems but doesn't have HN to turn to to fund their treatment. One is barely an issue, the other is a travesty that you can help to change. Expect this to come up every time until it's no longer needed.