[jsnk]

This is just a rant.

I want Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, Walmart, all the so called evil multinational corps, billionaires like Cuban, Gates, Musk, Zuckerberg & Co. and the the government to get into American healthcare industry and dismantle the multi trillion dollars racket, change it into something functional and useful for the people.

I don't care if it will mean millions of people in the insurance, hospital administration, public and private health policies will be out of jobs. Sorry I don't. Also for doctors, medical schools, state medical license issuing bodies, you are gonna allow minimum 10x increase in new doctors entering your field. The gravy train must stop. The system must work for the people, not at the expense of the people.

Should it be socialized healthcare or free market healthcare? At this point, I don't care. Anything else is better than this heap of trash. I've experienced both systems in my life and both systems are superior to the American system. But these discussion are distractions to what's really causing the problem in the American health care system. There are trillion dollar protected class of people who make the entire system unworkable. This system needs to collapse and be replaced with something new.

[techsupporter]

> I don't care if it will mean millions of people in the insurance, hospital administration, public and private health policies will be out of jobs. Sorry I don't.

As someone who works in this industry, though for a non-profit medical practice group, we want it gone as much as the patients. It's an absolute nightmare to do anything. We have a staff of twenty people just to deal with the paperwork side of the business, and that doesn't include answering phone calls from patients. All of those people could be put to far more productive use doing anything else; half of them are people who wanted to get into medicine but not through a full-fledged medical degree and are now toiling away shuffling forms. We would love to move them to patient care assistants or anything else but we have to have them in order to get paid.

(I know for sure we would like to have them do other things and they would like to do this because our group has a role rotation program where people can rotate in and out of groups to try other things. The insurance/paperwork group has virtually no one want to rotate in and almost the entire group is on the list to rotate out for a month or two a year to do something different.)

> Also for doctors, medical schools, state medical license issuing bodies, you are gonna allow minimum 10x increase in new doctors entering your field.

I also completely agree with this. It's frustrating to deal with the regulatory issues, too. We had to move a practice office (that is, where patient care is provided) from a place we leased to an office we bought as part of a commercial condominium a few years ago. Getting that approved took months of back and forth because the rules of the licensing body didn't fully contemplate an "office condominium" like we purchased.

[adam_arthur]

There are a lot of "obvious" things in medicine that could be easily solved if there were political will. The reason most things are expensive is due to existing regulations that add unnecessary hurdles.

For example, prescription glasses can be made for a few dollars, but often cost over $100 and you have to pay to see the optometrist for a prescription.

In reality, you could walk up to an automated machine, have it assess your vision, and pay $10-$20 for a pair of glasses. This has actually been proven in other countries that allow you to buy glasses without a prescription. In a competitive market, price of a good tends to trend towards marginal cost of production... which is clearly not the case in a lot of medicine/vision etc.

Also, my copay for one of the medicine's on Cuban's site is $50, but on the site it's $3. Why is this? Seems some exploitation of incomplete information... could be fixed through regulation... like requiring pharmacies to show pricing of generics when filling prescriptions.

Also hospitals don't list pricing... though there was a rule passed under the Trump admin that requires them to do so. Not sure if this is in an easily consumable format yet.

So I agree with your sentiment, but don't think it can be disrupted without changes in law. Primarily there is way too much information asymmetry in all areas of medical care

[renewiltord]

Those companies, especially Amazon; Google; and Apple, are only evil MNCs on HN/Reddit and media (mainstream or otherwise). In the real world, these are America’s most trusted and beloved brands. Brand loyalty is high for all three and if they announce they’re going to make anything, the country as a whole is excited to see what comes of it. Irrespective of whether they listen to Fox or CNN, people know from their lived experience that their search engine is fantastic, their phones are fantastic, their shopping experience is fantastic.

To make it even better, the folks on the street who hear you work there think you are übersmart superstar solving the world’s problems.

There are probably tens of millions of people hoping they do something like what you’re asking for.

Of course, I don’t think it fits in their wheelhouse. We’ll see.

[daniel-cussen]

All three have been very virtuous for very long segments of time in many aspects of their work, and there are many such segments of time. Less virtuous than many people I know, but more than a great many organizations. That said I don't have enough visibility to judge them with less than about a decade of hindsight.