Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by forgetfreeman 938 days ago
You've literally described the current healthcare system in the US. Minute Clinic/NPs/PAs providing front line care. It doesn't appear to be working well based on how our country's healthcare system ranks against other industrialized nations.
1 comments

I don't live in the US anymore, so it's hard for me to speak to the US healthcare system, but as an outsider it seems to me that the problems with the system stem from the incentive structure, and won't be fixed by any technology.

It seems to me the US healthcare system sits in this weird gap where it's not funded by private individuals, but it's also not publicly funded (excluding medicare/medicade/VA/tricare etc)

So it doesn't benefit from efficiencies of a single-payer system like the UK has, and it doesn't have to obey proper market forces either, since you have a bunch of for-profit entities in the middle, but the costs are obfuscated from the consumer unless you're unlucky enough not to have employer-funded health insurance.

So until you fix those core issues, I don't see how technological advancements are going to have much of an effect either positive or negative.

It's an orthogonal issue.

I don't disagree on any particular point except the notion that a medical AI represents an advancement. That claim would have to be studied extensively over decades.