
Ask HN: Aren't we smart enough to figure out health care? - wonderflpancake
I&#x27;m not sure which side this would fall on politically - possibly neither as I&#x27;ve never heard it proposed.<p>I&#x27;ll brain dump and would love feedback.  This is pretty high level and there are lots of details that would obviously need to follow.  I&#x27;m most interested in feedback about the general idea.<p>- Why don&#x27;t we look at healthcare as a simple math problem?<p>- For example, lets imagine with a population of 100 people, in a given year there will be 5 heart attacks, 10 MRIs, 200 office visits, etc.<p>- At scale we would know predictably what expenses would be.  Factor in things like % of population who is unable to pay anything.  The rest of the population evenly splits the bill.<p>- Doctors are fully responsible for determining what treatment a patient needs and gets.<p>- There would have to be some sort of accountability as the doctors would be the decision makers, to make sure you don&#x27;t end up with a corrupt doctor.  But they already do something similar by taking the doctors oath.<p>- Costs would change as doctors would charge based on their costs, which would change under a new system.  This should normalize quickly and become predictable.<p>- A person&#x27;s medical history is not a factor<p>- Healthcare cannot be insurance-based because its not actually optional.  Unless people are actually going to be turned away if they don&#x27;t have insurance, we can&#x27;t have an insurance-based system.<p>- This system means everyone pays for wellness of self and as a whole, instead of paying individually for illness.
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CalChris
Why aren't we smart enough to figure out defense? We massively overpay per
capita on health care and we massively overpay per capita on defense.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditure_per_capita)

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superioritycplx
Now add megapharmacorps with their lobbyists and wining-and-dining of doctors.

Don't expect much progress (the kind you want) as long as there's massive
money to be made.

Want to make the whole thing less profitable? Sure, but you can expect even
less progress then. Money is a hell of a drug.

The current health system is far from perfect but you know what? It's a system
and most people are living longer and better thanks to it. Is it possible to
make so that 100% of people benefit from it? I think it's nearly impossible,
but that's another question.

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xkcd-sucks
Aren't "we" also smart enough to figure out how to extract wealth from health
care at someone else's expense?

