Comment by KittenInABox
1 year ago
This is almost certainly not a healthcare issue, but a political/lobbying issue. Solutions will happen in the political/lobbying space. We will need to fix shit like:
* very fast, arbitrary disapprovals of healthcare-- requiring 6 weeks of physical therapy before ordering a test of what is almost certainly a torn ligament or other thing is stupid and directly harms patient outcomes;
* enforcement of mental healthcare equality-- hospitals should have equal beds, equal availability, equal pay for workers, and insurance companies should also be paying equally for mental and body health;
* forcing the hands of drug price fixers-- that's right, it's not just insurance, or pharmaceuticals, it's a shitty middleman between them all that rolls up and sets prices on both sides, things like e.g. medicare negotiating drug prices directly will disrupt these fuckos
* DOCTOR OWNED HOSPITALS MUST COME BACK-- no more vulture finance that literally made this illegal
* hospital geographic monopolies must be eliminated-- that's right, hospitals can ban competition! No more of this!
* SAFE STAFFING RATIOS
* releasing the budget on residency-- that's right, the government sets how much money they are willing to put towards new doctors!
* jail time for negligent insurance decisions-- we know that insurance companies will slow-walk bureaucracy lifesaving healthcare to desperately ill, disabled people in the hopes they will die before the approval goes through
I agree that it is more of a political issue at this point because the middlemen are way too powerful and would fight tooth and nail to keep raking in the moolah.
Yes, I think some kind of technology that explicitly targets/disrupts the way lobbying works would be huge. I just don't think this is healthcare-specific unfortunately.