Healthcare

Ekkie Thump

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Innocent algorithm inadvertently automates racism: https://www.washingtonpost.com/heal...rs-white-patients-over-sicker-black-patients/

A widely used algorithm that predicts which patients will benefit from extra medical care dramatically underestimates the health needs of the sickest black patients, amplifying long-standing racial disparities in medicine, researchers have found...

...Correcting the bias would more than double the number of black patients flagged as at risk of complicated medical needs within the health system the researchers studied, and they are already working with Optum on a fix. When the company replicated the analysis on a national data set of 3.7 million patients, they found that black patients who were ranked by the algorithm as equally as in need of extra care as white patients were much sicker: They collectively suffered from 48,772 additional chronic diseases...

...The algorithm wasn’t intentionally racist — in fact, it specifically excluded race. Instead, to identify patients who would benefit from more medical support, the algorithm used a seemingly race-blind metric: how much patients would cost the health-care system in the future. But cost isn’t a race-neutral measure of health-care need. Black patients incurred about $1,800 less in medical costs per year than white patients with the same number of chronic conditions; thus the algorithm scored white patients as equally at risk of future health problems as black patients who had many more diseases.
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Adisa

likes to take afvanadva wothowi doubt
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Was streaming CNN US yesterday. 4 in 5 ads were about health insurance.
 

VorZakone

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How the feck do these people manage to live a normal life in the US? To be a medical emergency away from personal bankruptcy. It's crazy stuff.
 

oneniltothearsenal

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Its been a remarkably effective PR/marketing blitz from the for-profit health companies and big pharma to get every news network constantly repeating the disingenuous and misleading "But how are they going to 'pay' for M4A"

That's been the marketing/PR bullshitting line the profiteers have been pushing in their industry marketing blitz. Its been working based on how much the shills on MSNBC and CNN just keeping repeating that greedy GOP line instead of talking about things like medical bankruptcies and the cost of the illogical for-profit system doing what we have above.
 

Abizzz

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Dwazza Gunnar Solskjær said:
Clue is in the name.
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... If you see a horse in a zebra cage is it a zebra?

Just saying if hospitals make millions / hour just treating normal patients they become lucrative targets. Imagine how much revenue is lost if they need to close down for a couple of hours? (granted one would need to be proper trash to rob / blackmail a hospital, but no shortage of trash around).
 

oneniltothearsenal

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Raoul said:
Thread...

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Will MSNBC and CNN have Mr. Potter on air to talk about this?

The sham of selling the word "choice" instead of actually providing one doesnt stop at health insurance but permeates through corporate media as well. Its why for all his Better than trump propaganda Biden in the end is no better than Trump and simply another corporate red herring for the gullible.
 

utdalltheway

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In network/out of network.
Should it matter that much in price?
You should not be allowed to charge that much for these tests.
Her primary insurance company should sue the out of network lab, but they won't.
 

Cheimoon

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Eboue said:
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The abstaining argument doesn't work for STDs and pregancies; never would have thought someone would peddle it for health care needs. But there you go, you learn something new every day.
 

Adisa

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Pretty sure he has access to the best healthcare money can buy.
 

tombombadil

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There is no place for insurance in healthcare. The very nature of insurance means that it will never work. Not for the people, anyway. Capitalism only works when competition is as close to perfect as possible and when the negotiation tables are as level as possible. Which part of medicine and all their patents is not a monopoly? Oh don't like the price of cancer medicine? You can go ahead and die then. Which part of that is a level negotiation table? Without those factors, it is not capitalism. It is an oligarchy. That's why the answer is medicare for all. Or some might call it universal healthcare.

Surely, it must be obvious to everyone by now after living through the past 1 year. Healthcare should be enshrined as a human right and offered as a government service. For some stupid reason, people keep perpetuating the lie. "Why should I pay for other people's bad life choices?" That's not true. You don't choose to get hit by a car. You don't choose to get cancer. You don't choose to get infected during a pandemic. And for some other dumb reason, people keep complaining, "but how are we going to pay for it?" Well, we can start by having one whole country negotiate their medical supplies as a single entity. Lower prices from the absurd levels they are at in some countries. Don't like it? Well you can go do business in some other country then. That's a start.
 
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Rado_N

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These two run a photography based YouTube channel I like but also he’s a doctor, and has posted a few interesting videos related to that world.

This one dropped today and is utterly rage inducing.

Whether you receive the care you need shouldn’t depend on your bank account or your ability to understand complex medical issues and argue with some jumped up cnut from an insurance company.

Sort your shit out America.
 

berbatrick

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No US healthcare horror story, but just amazed at some of the numbers involved.

I had a visit to a specialist, paid $35 upfront. They did a bunch of tests: lung function, blood allergy, and some nitrous oxide thing.

According to this bill, these tests cost (drumroll) $2600, which is more than what i make in a month, while the doc herself gets $500.
I'm on the hook for about $180, i can deal with it.


I could see that the tests and equipment were good and probably not cheap, but $2600 is just a made up nonsense number. And indeed today, I got a bill showing that, while the insurance "covered" $1944+$959 = $2900, what they actually paid the hospital was $1100. The remaining $1800 is just made-up, accounting tricks that vanish into the air to somehow keep this system going. I found examples online where these made-up numbers are sometimes as high as 10X the real money paid by insurance.


A real shocker is with the new inhaler I'm getting:

A list price of $500 for one month's medicine! (and I have other meds too, it would add up to over 1k). I wonder how much of the $435 they "cover" is actual money.
 
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