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514 points sarimkx | 3 comments | 14 Feb 24 16:31 UTC | HN request time: 0.854s | source
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CalChris ◴[14 Feb 24 22:10 UTC] No.39376282[source]▶
ELIMINATING MIDDLEMEN IN HEALTHCARE

by creating another middleman in healthcare. This was first proposed by Jim Clark's Healtheon. "We want to empower the doctors and the patients and get all the other assholes out of the way." … "Except for us. One asshole in the middle." — The New New Thing, Michael Lewis.

The reason we spend so much is that public healthcare is a public good and private companies aren't good at managing public goods. They're good at making money which is a different purpose (which has probably served most people reading this very well). We need Single Payer. Indeed we have Single Payer in Medicare and TriCare and other areas. It works pretty well. We need to eliminate middlemen in healthcare by actually eliminating rent seeking middlemen in healthcare.

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Ensorceled ◴[14 Feb 24 23:24 UTC] No.39377015[source]▶
Yeah, this one is weird, the middlemen are there because we allow rent-seeking behaviour whether by insurance companies, complex corporate structures that have taken over practices, PBMs, etc. etc. Those aren't going away if we make things "more efficient" with technology, there is too much money to be made in the inefficiencies.
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1. madeofpalk ◴[15 Feb 24 00:38 UTC] No.39377632[source]▶
There’s only one way to ‘eliminate the middle man’, and that’s universal health care
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2. mlhpdx ◴[15 Feb 24 03:55 UTC] No.39378934[source]▶
So there are no middle(people) in Medicare? Or the defense industry? Single payer may just as likely future calcify the structures.
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3. Ensorceled ◴[15 Feb 24 11:31 UTC] No.39381476[source]▶
> So there are no middle(people) in Medicare? Or the defense industry?

Sooooo close to getting it.

I checked out "How does Medicare work?" [1] and, wow, that's so much more complicated than healthcare in Canada. A big part of the problem is that Medicare has to work within the current broken structure of the US health care system and pay those same middlemen.

> Single payer may just as likely future calcif[ied] the structures.

But what the US has is so much worse than the how the rest of the developed world has "calcify the structures".

[1] https://www.medicare.gov/basics/get-started-with-medicare/me...