<story><title>Hacker News Folks Get Long Overdue Thanks</title><url>http://linuxlock.blogspot.sg/2013/07/hacker-news-gets-long-overdue-thanks.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mixmax</author><text>While this is a great and heartbreaking story that makes me proud to be an active member of HN it&amp;#x27;s also a symptom of the totally broken US healthcare system.&lt;p&gt;From wikipedia:&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_States&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Health_care_in_the_United_State...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Hacker News Folks Get Long Overdue Thanks</title><url>http://linuxlock.blogspot.sg/2013/07/hacker-news-gets-long-overdue-thanks.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>nwenzel</author><text>Great story of compassion and triumph. So... How do we make it scale?&lt;p&gt;Is it mandatory insurance? Insurance doesn&amp;#x27;t make everything affordable, but it probably wild have been helpful. Though maybe the co-pay would have been $50k.&lt;p&gt;Universal tax-payer funded insurance? The term &amp;quot;tax payer&amp;quot; is interesting because politicians and pundits forget that we&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;Big Data? Sorry, I couldn&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;Separating health care from your job? Of your insurer only needs you to be healthy until you find a new job, there&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;Sorry, I don&amp;#x27;t have an answer. Hopefully, great stories like the OP continue. But if we don&amp;#x27;t make it scale then we haven&amp;#x27;t really done all we possibly can do.</text></comment>