Algorithm Contest Aims To Predict Health Problems

databuff writes "The April 4 launch of the $3 million Heritage Health Prize has been announced by the Heritage Provider Network, a network of doctors. The competition challenges data hackers to build algorithms that predict who will go to the hospital in the next year, so that preventative action can be taken. An algorithm might find that somebody with diabetes, hypertension and high cholesterol is a 90 per cent risk for hospitalization. Knowing this, it might be cheaper for an HMO to enroll them in an exercise program now rather than pay the likely hospital bill. The competition takes the same approach as the $1 million Netflix Prize, but solves a far more significant problem."

Comments

Or Like Kaiser does....

[Anonymous Coward]

Just label them as a 'High Risk Candidate' and jack up their premiums 2-3x so they can no longer afford healthcare by the point at which they need service :P

Re:Or Like Kaiser does....

[Rakshasa Taisab]

Don't worry, other countries will make proper use of that technology to safe money _AND_ provide better health care at the same time.

Re:Or Like Kaiser does....

[geekoid]

The Government Health Care policy will stop them from doing it anymore.

Re:Or Like Kaiser does....

[cayenne8]

"The Government Health Care policy will stop them from doing it anymore."

ON the other hand...the feds just might use it...to decide on your method and amount of care you will get...?

Re:Or Like Kaiser does....

[AHuxley]

It depends who is paying and why.
If your shareholders are paying, better to steam the sickest away from your care. Everyday they stay sick with you is a real loss.
If your shareholders can bill the US gov, steam the sickest to extra care that makes a profit and improves 'positive outcome' stats.
If your a gov, steam the sick bright young people to extra care that protects future tax payers and skills base.
If your a gov, steam the sick old people to less care that protects tax payers.

if Weight 300 pounds

[Snaller]

then print "Not good"

Re:if Weight 300 pounds

[Locke2005]

Oh come on, I know some Sumo Wrestlers that are in great shape!

Re:if Weight 300 pounds

[idontgno]

Along those lines, I'd like to point out that "egg-shaped" is, per definition, a shape. A good shape, even, for selected applications. (Like for an egg.)

"I'm not out of shape. This (gestures at rotund body) is a shape, you Sesame Street failure."

Re:if Weight 300 pounds

[hedwards]

It's idiomatic in nature, as is most of the language. Or are you one of those people who gets asked out and immediately leaves the room?

Re:if Weight 300 pounds

[Locke2005]

"Are you sure you won't change your mind?"

"Why? What's wrong with the one I have?"

Nevada gaming commission might take interest...

[Tmack]

sounds like a way to cheat the system on something LasVegas probably has a line on already...have you seen what they are betting on for the Superbowl? How long will it take Christina Aguilera to sing the National Anthem, Will Fergie be dressed as a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader at any point during the Halftime show...

-Tm

Re:Nevada gaming commission might take interest...

[Stregano]

Yeah, I am out in Sin City, and you do not even want to know what I bet on, but if there is another nipple slip, I will be one rich man

Re:Nevada gaming commission might take interest...

[geekoid]

Which would lead to you seeing a lot more nipple.

Nipple is a fun word.

Too little Minority Report

[Anonymous Coward]

... I am sparing my mad skills for the 'predict the next to commit a crime' contest.

Safeway

[MrEricSir]

That's likely what will happen, but not necessarily the only result.

To lower company premiums, Safeway bribes employees to quit smoking and/or lose weight:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124476804026308603.html

Re:Safeway

[NevarMore]

I'm 6'3" 155lbs and I've never smoked more than the occasional cigar. My doctor is always surprised to see me for an annual physical, in his clinical opinion he doesn't need to see me more often than every 3 years.

Whats in programs like this for me? Do I get rewarded for being healthy or should I take up smoking and then quit to get my prize for doing what I'm supposed to do to take care of myself?

Re:Safeway

[DanTheStone]

The same thing applies to non-smokers with regard to smoking breaks. You'd be an idiot to take up smoking just for that incentive.

Re:Safeway

[ocdscouter]

Should he proba the whole thing?

Re:Safeway

[MrEricSir]

Your reward is a long, healthy life. That's more valuable than money, IMO.

Re:Safeway

[nickersonm]

Read the article. Yes, you do get rewarded for being healthy. They discount the employee-paid portion of health care premiums if you elect to take, and pass, various physical tests. Eg. nonsmokers pay $312 less annually than smokers.

Re:Safeway

[idontgno]

Or until you get run over by the a school bus being driven by a drunk, overweight, chain-smoking loser who will spend the rest of his long, unproductive life behind bars.

Re:Safeway

[markdavis]

How is being a "nonsmoker" taking, and passing a "physical test"?

Re:Safeway

[HornWumpus]

Get a bubble pipe. (the kids toy that blows soap bubbles)

Claim it relaxes you, just like smoking.

Re:Safeway

[hedwards]

But how common is that? This is more or less the first time I've ever heard about that, more generally if you're taking care of yourself the only reward is possible good health in the future, even as you subsidize the care for people that don't care about how they take care of themselves. People who have genetic risk factors benefiting doesn't bother me at all.

Re:Safeway

[gnapster]

It proves that, during the interview with your company's healthcare rep, the overwhelming cologne was just bad taste rather than covering for lying about your tobacco addiction.

Re:Safeway

[drsquare]

That's interesting, because Americans are always telling us that universal healthcare is bad because it means people interfering with their lifestyle choices. Yet here in the land of the free, we have people being fined for smoking and being fat, something which doesn't happen in socialist healthcare systems.

Re:Safeway

[MrEricSir]

Keep your FACTS out of my politics!

Good idea, hard to implement

[Romario77]

Might be a good thing for our health-care system, but I doubt that it would be implemented - too much red tape around privacy and the data is not centralized, so it could be hard to have access to this data.

Re:Good idea, hard to implement

[damn_registrars]

the data is not centralized

Actually a solid argument could be made that the data is centralized, you just don't have access to it because your insurance company makes more money by not allowing you to access it. Insurance companies have plenty of centralized data on plenty of people in this country; enough to make very solid models - particularly models for the types of people that the insurance companies are most concerned about.

If you could get the data from just one big insurance company or HMO - like perhaps the one that is advertising on this story - you could get plenty of data to build your algorithm. You just have to convince them that you are worthy of access to it (even if it has the personal identifiers removed).

Re:Good idea, hard to implement

[Romario77]

Well, typically until you get to the hospital insurance company doesn't know much about you - may be your age, sex, may be height and weight, but they don't typically ask for this info when you sign up for insurance. And even after you get into hospital the information about you is in hospital records and not in the insurance company possession - they just know the procedures performed. So, the initial data about you is in the hospital (blood pressure, sugar level, weight, etc.) And in the hospital it could be in different systems, sometimes on paper only.

Re:Good idea, hard to implement

[praxis]

You've never enrolled in insurance have you? They don't ask this for employer-provided insurance, since that's a different kind of coverage (where they have models for the type of employees that employer tends to employ, etc). For those cases, they rely on the principles insurance is suppose to rely on, for individual buyers, they give you an anal probe and only enroll you if you are not likely to need their services.

Re:Good idea, hard to implement

[Romario77]

I did enroll in insurance in many companies. And this is the main type of insurance in US - provided through employer. With this type of enrollment insurance companies don't know much information about me until I am in the hospital. When you enroll by yourself they mostly ask for preexisting conditions, I don't remember the insurance companies asking for my blood pressure or cholesterol level.

Re:Good idea, hard to implement

[modmans2ndcoming]

uhh, the health care incentives that are part of ARRA will have moved nearly the entire health system to a completely electronic patient record that has the ability to share data between providers by 2016. I say nearly only because I am sure some providers will not be able to meet the incentives deadline and will start getting penalized for not being there, but with in a few years of the deadline, everyone will have gotten there.

Re:Good idea, hard to implement

[cbs4385]

Just arguing the point, but one of the databases where I work has the medical records of 1 out of every 4 Americans

Re:Good idea, hard to implement

[Carnildo]

Well, typically until you get to the hospital insurance company doesn't know much about you - may be your age, sex, may be height and weight, but they don't typically ask for this info when you sign up for insurance.

When I applied for private health insurance (as opposed to company-provided insurance), part of the application was six pages of "Have you been treated by a medical professional for such-and-such in the past one year, three years, or ten years?". This was in addition to things like age, sex, smoking status (not only "are you a smoker?", but also "if you quit, how long ago?"), and so on.

Re:Good idea, hard to implement

[hedwards]

In most of the country they make you fill out an extensive questionnaire. Around here it's pretty complicated and is designed to flunk ~10% of the applicants into the high risk pool. Which sounds bad, but up until now it was the only way that the state could guarantee that everybody could get access to health insurance. Previously some people couldn't get coverage no matter how much they were willing to pay. Now they just have to figure out where to get the money, which is not easy to do with the high risk pool.

Not Really Like the Netflix Prize...

[damn_registrars]

The Netflix Prize was sponsored by the company who gained the most from it. In the same vein, this should then be sponsored by an HMO.

This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[Wonko the Sane]

The purpose of insurance is cover random catastrophic expenses, not to let a person cost-shift known expenses to his or her neighbors. If your body is breaking down because you spend decades being fat and never did anything about it then foot the bill yourself. If you can't afford the cost of fixing a problem caused by your own lifestyle decisions then tough shit.

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[Locke2005]

Very few medical conditions are caused purely by lifestyle choices. Genetics play a big role. Many catastrophic expenses are due to catastrophic events, like car accidents. Even HIV is not always caused by life style choices -- millions of babies are born with it, and there is no way of determining whether a health care worker contracted it because of their job or because of their choice of sex partners.

That being said, I agree with you in principle. Public health care should be targeted at prevention and diagnostics. Catastrophic health care should be covered by insurance; if you don't pay for insurance, you're out of luck. That still doesn't change the fact that 90% of most people's health care expenses are incurred in the last 5 months of their lives, but cutting off funding for that would amount to a real version of the "death panels" the Republicans have falsely associated with the new Health Care act. Health insurance is so expensive because we simply refuse to let people die in peace.

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[geekoid]

When does there 5 months begin. you sick and in your twenties, how do you know that's not the last 5 months of your life?

And by the way, Fuck dying in peace. I want to live as long as possible. Preferable forever, even if it's on a machine.

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[sabt-pestnu]

> I want to live as long as possible. Preferable forever...

We can cover this by continuing to grow tissue samples of you for experimental purposes. Would you care to contribute your genome to science?

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[Wonko the Sane]

That still doesn't change the fact that 90% of most people's health care expenses are incurred in the last 5 months of their lives, but cutting off funding for that would amount to a real version of the "death panels" the Republicans have falsely associated with the new Health Care act.

This problem will be solved shortly when Medicare melts down. Then people will get exactly as much end of life care as they can afford and no more.

Which, in the end, is how it should have been done from the beginning. When there aren't enough resources to give everybody what they want then some kind of rationing will occur no matter how much people complain and protest about it. The only decision to make is whether to have rationing by price or rationing by fiat. Rationing by price is the superior solution because then market forces will provide incentives to bring the costs down to increase the number of potential customers. Rationing by fiat puts everybody at the mercy of unelected bureaucrats.

To see how this works compare the prices of procedures that people normally pay out of pocket vs procedures that people normally pay for with OPM. Laser eye surgery has been getting cheaper over the years. Anything covered by Medicare or private health insurance has been getting more expensive.

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[cmburns69]

I want to live as long as possible. Preferable forever, even if it's on a machine.

If you can afford that, I'm happy to support you in your quest for immortality.

But please don't make me, and my children, and their children (and so on) pay just because you refuse to die gracefully at some point.

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[DesertNomad]

Very few medical conditions are caused purely by lifestyle choices...

You'll need to show a little proof here.

On the other hand, "Personal decisions are the leading cause of death", Dr. Ralph L. Keeney of Duke University, 2008
http://orforum.blog.informs.org/files/2009/01/keeney.pdf

A discussion of his paper, with a variety of points of view, at the Operations Research Forum
http://orforum.blog.informs.org/2009/01/06/personal-decisions-are-the-leading-cause-of-death/

And for the rest of us, the Wired article on his paper is here
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-10/ff_smartlist_keeney

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[smellsofbikes]

Public health care should be targeted at prevention and diagnostics. Catastrophic health care should be covered by insurance; if you don't pay for insurance, you're out of luck. That still doesn't change the fact that 90% of most people's health care expenses are incurred in the last 5 months of their lives, but cutting off funding for that would amount to a real version of the "death panels" the Republicans have falsely associated with the new Health Care act. Health insurance is so expensive because we simply refuse to let people die in peace.

Given that people who are most likely dying, but possibly not -- terminal cancer patients, who spend unbelievable amounts of money on the slight chance they'll beat cancer -- have zero incentive to die in peace and an extremely high incentive to spend every penny they have on the slight chance they'll beat cancer, especially if the money actually belongs to their insurance company, and given that the health care industry, who makes money off providing health care, also has absolutely zero incentive to let people die in peace, *and* given that the general public shows strong support for keeping people alive through extraordinary medical efforts and even a whisper about managed health care and providing treatment based on statistical analysis will have the AARP so far up a politician's butt that blue hair will be sticking out his nose... what do we do to actually implement a plan wherein people die in peace? In an article on this subject by Atul Gawande, a surgical oncologist, he pointed out that the quality of life for people who went through Hospice was significantly better than that of people who went through extraordinary medical procedures, and I think articles like his, that convince people that life-prolonging medical treatments are painful, expensive, and don't actually do any real good, is probably the only way we as a culture have to fix this problem. But I don't think even that's going to do much. I know in my family my religiously-oriented aunt and uncle think it would actually be sinful to let my grandmother "just die" rather than doing everything they can to try to keep her alive, even though she's always said she wanted to die peacefully when it was her time, rather than hooked up to a machine, and the same certainly seemed to be the case when hundreds of thousands of people were shrieking wildly that Terry Schiavo should be kept alive against what appeared to be her own written wishes.

When faced with those three problems: individual, institutional, and cultural pressure to preserve life at any cost, I think we as a culture are simply facing inevitable bankruptcy, as our medical industry provides ever-newer, ever-more-expensive ways to give people another couple of days of life.

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[sugarmotor]

You wrote, "Health insurance is so expensive because we simply refuse to let people die in peace."--- Where you get that from?

I thought it's so expensive because it's a rip-off / blackmail industry. And regulated on top of that. Then, in the US add a little bit of racism to the reasons

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[Rakshasa Taisab]

This is where the cultural differences comes into play...

You Americans call it "death panels" and denying people's right to try everything to stay alive, while over here we like to see it as a "dignified end" and use scares resources to help those who actually have a chance of a life worth living.

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[DarwinSurvivor]

If you can locate the person they contracted it from, it's actually pretty easy to find out. Now if you work in a hospital and a patient infects you, it may become quite difficult, but if you contract HIV it is definitely a good idea to have all the people you have been in contact with tested. A) In case they have it so they can get treatment B) So that person doesn't keep spreading it.

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[drooling-dog]

If you can't afford the cost of fixing a problem caused by your own lifestyle decisions then tough shit.

Says the conservative who couldn't give a piss about anybody until it's about him.

Since you're apparently not fat there's no chance you'll ever be in need of medical attention, but - just hypothetically - I'd love to be your insurance adjuster, playing by your own rules, if you ever did. The look on your face as we explain that we're denying your claim because of some arguably sub-optimal "lifestyle choice" you once made would be priceless. Eat meat? Play sports? Work a stressful job? Drive a car? You're on your own.

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[Wonko the Sane]

If I was in the market for health insurance I would have no problem disclosing any of those factors and paying a premium appropriate to the risk. It's no different that a person who lives next to a river paying more for flood insurance than someone who lives on the top of a hill.

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[Locke2005]

And some people (e.g. George Burns) choose to smoke and drink and still live to be 100. The point is that both genetics AND lifestyle choices enter into the equation. For example, I'm 6' tall and have never weighed over 185 pounds, but I still have diabetes, not because I didn't eat right and exercise, but because it runs in my family. My grandmother died of diabetes, my mother has diabetes, and my sister has diabetes. None of them ever qualified as obese either. Jim Fixx's dad died of heart disease in his 50's, so Jim Fixx took up running every day to overcome his genetics -- and still died of heart attack at 52.

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[Locke2005]

Just remember that the religious right considers every life sacred, and that "letting grandma die in peace" is tantamount to murder. In fact, I think if they had there way, they would execute you for not doing everything possible to prolong your grandma's life, just to prove to you how sacred life really is!

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[tomthepom]

Then people will get exactly as much end of life care as they can afford and no more.

One of the most stupidly cruel and inhuman sentences I've ever read.

Which, in the end, is how it should have been done from the beginning.

Which was how it was done in the beginning, you ignorant libertarian fundamentalist. And the sight of the old and the poor dying in the streets was exactly the reason that most civilized countries adopted social systems to treat them.

Laser eye surgery has been getting cheaper over the years. Anything covered by Medicare or private health insurance has been getting more expensive.

Every technology and drug has got cheaper over the years. The scope and cost of newer technologies and drugs has gone up, irrespective of how it's paid for.

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[Xyrus]

Rationing by price is the superior solution because then market forces will provide incentives to bring the costs down to increase the number of potential customers.

Now how the hell is that going to work with insurance? Insurance companies make money when they take your premiums and then GIVE YOU NOTHING BACK. Then add in the primary driver for insurance rates are the ODDS, and the whole market-driven mantra falls apart. No amount of market competition is going change the underlying odds the insurance companies are betting with.

Healthcare by price as you describe in your "superior solution" will screw over everyone who is not healthy or wealthy. Insurance companies DO NOT make money by paying out claims. They DO NOT make money betting against the odds. They DO NOT make money taking on high risk individuals or ones with chronic conditions.

To sum up: THERE ARE NO POSITIVE INCENTIVES PROVIDING COVERAGE FOR EVERYONE. Nor will the market provide any. If it were profitable to cover everyone, then an insurance company would have already done it.

Insurance companies don't make money by placing stupid bets, and no amount of "market forces" is going to change that.

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[nido]

Then people will get exactly as much end of life care as they can afford and no more.

One of the most stupidly cruel and inhuman sentences I've ever read.

When my grandmother got teh cancer (multiple myeloma, a form of bone cancer iirc), she went along with her Mayo Clinic doctor's treatment program not because she wanted to live, but for the benefit of her family.

But when it came to paying for something herself, she put her foot down. I clearly remember going to the pharmacy to pick up the latest new prescription, for Thalidomide. They told me it'd be $2,000 for a month's supply. Grandma could have easily afforded it, but she wasn't that interested in living.

News flash: people die, because dying is a part of living. We should use the technology we have to prolong life as appropriate (gunshot wound to the head are survivable, for example). But it's stupid to give dying people a blank check for whatever type of care the medical-industrial complex thinks is appropriate.

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[Tromad]

According to the safeway article linked above:

Safeway's plan capitalizes on two key insights gained in 2005. The first is that 70% of all health-care costs are the direct result of behavior. The second insight, which is well understood by the providers of health care, is that 74% of all costs are confined to four chronic conditions (cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity). Furthermore, 80% of cardiovascular disease and diabetes is preventable, 60% of cancers are preventable, and more than 90% of obesity is preventable.

They probably know what they are talking about, seeing as how their premiums have remained stable over 4 years while the average increased 38%.

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[Wonko the Sane]

Now how the hell is that going to work with insurance?

It doesn't.

End of life care is not something that should be covered by health insurance. There's a reason that collision insurance for your car doesn't cover replacing engine components when they start to wear out due to age.

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[Wonko the Sane]

One of the most stupidly cruel and inhuman sentences I've ever read.

It doesn't matter. No matter what your or I or anyone else thinks there aren't enough resources in the world to give everybody the care that they want therefore not everybody will get it. It's not a matter of cruelty or humanity; it's an issue of mathematics.

If it's that important to you that you live an extra half of a year then save up the resources now while you're young to pay for a team of doctors to hold back the inevitable for a few months. Otherwise don't plan on forcing other people to pay for it.

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[Peeteriz]

The answer sounds cruel and inhumane because there is NO happy-fluffy answer that doesn't rely on help from rainbow-farting invisible pink unicorns.

At almost any point of life-end there is something more that can be done to prolong it. And there's not enough resources in the world to do everything for everyone even if 100% of population worked in medicine. So, unavoidably, at some point the care will stop and people will die. That's life.

The only discussion is about when, who and how should better make the choice to not apply some treatment because of resource=cost issues, knowing that it will mean someone dying sooner. Avoiding the discussion of such choice because it's morally hard doesn't solve anything, it just selfishly pushes the responsibility of this choice to others and allows to arrogantly blame them for life being the way it is.

We need to discuss and agree on the best socioeconomic systems to choosing which and how much life saving treatments somebody/everybody will get or be denied, in a way that maximizes the common well-being and life expectancy. Any choice will usually be better for one group and worse (deadly worse) for others, so they will literally fight for their lives about making a choice that fits them best. That's how it is.

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[The_Wilschon]

The purpose of insurance is whatever the insurers and insured agree it is.

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[Wonko the Sane]

They can try but certain classes of expenses by their nature aren't insurable. A contract to do an impossible thing is no contract at all.

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[greg_barton]

The only decision to make is whether to have rationing by price or rationing by fiat.

You forgot rationing by fist, which is what will happen if Medicare breaks down. In the end the mob is far more efficient than the market.

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[Wonko the Sane]

if Medicare breaks down

How many years in a row do you think the US government can get away with borrowing nearly 50% of the budget? They're going to try to borrow another $2 trillion in calender year 2011, up from $1.7 trillion last year. What would it do to your finances if you charged a sum equal to your income on credit cards for four years in a row?

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[greg_barton]

You're not addressing my point.

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[Xyrus]

I never said anything about cost-shifting Fat Bastard, nor was that the point of the GP. I was refuting the inane logic that market forces would somehow magically lower insurance premiums so that everyone can afford it. In fact, I believe I stated that insurance companies play the odds and don't make stupid bets (i.e. taking on coverage for Fat Bastard without an increase in premium).

The health insurance industry is not about getting people adequate health coverage, nor should it be. It's about making money. They make money by betting on the events that are most likely to happen. Thus, expecting health insurance to cover healthcare is sort of like expecting a booky to pay you even when your horse loses.

Health insurance should be for unexpected events. We have turned it into a catch-all for health-care, which is pretty ridiculous. For routine and preventative medical expenses and such (or those with chronic/genetic conditions), a general health care plan should be in place INDEPENDENT OF health insurance.

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[Wonko the Sane]

I was refuting the inane logic that market forces would somehow magically lower insurance premiums so that everyone can afford it. In fact, I believe I stated that insurance companies play the odds and don't make stupid bets

Market forces will lower the cost of medical procedures, not insurance premiums. But this will only happen with medical procedures that are paid for out of pocket. The problem is excessive "insurance", not insufficient insurance.

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[Wonko the Sane]

What point? The fact that there's probably going to be riots when the US Government loses the ability to hand out free shit? That's a given.

Mobs don't really loot services though. When civil order breaks down people will break into the liquor stores and run off with as much booze as they can carry but they can't really do that with an appendectomy.

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[greg_barton]

You're out of touch with reality. And don't try hiding by whining about ad hominem, either.

Re:This is why "health insurance" is so expensive

[tabrnaker]

Quite right, quite right,... however, there just might be enough resources to give the people the care they actually NEED.

What most people need is a kick in the arse to start taking better care of themselves... which is probably really hard in the states where the economy depends on consumerism and the products available to consumer are usually of very poor nutritional quality or encourage sedentary behaviour.

OR

[Anonymous Coward]

"Knowing this, it might be cheaper for an HMO to enroll them in an exercise program" OR DROP THEIR COVERAGE!

Re:OR

[dr2chase]

Thankfully, under Obamacare, that's not legal.

If they can't kick you to the curb, they've got to try Plan B, which is improving your health before you cost them money.

Re:OR

[the way]

"Knowing this, it might be cheaper for an HMO to enroll them in an exercise program" OR DROP THEIR COVERAGE!

They're a network of doctors and specialists, not an insurer - so this is completely irrelevant to the company sponsoring this. All they can do with the results (and they'll be the one that gets the algorithm, and it's using their data) is use it to tell their docs which of their patients need more (or different) help.

Re:OR

[dr2chase]

I am pretty sure there are other provisions that make it difficult for them to jack up rates. Other countries (Germany, Switzerland) deliver universal care in the same way. It's the most expensive way to deliver universal care, but that's what our "fiscally responsible" conservative legislators decided was best, jerks. As for what universal care is for, pretty much everything. That is what works in all the other countries, that spend less than we do, most of them with longer lifespans, more healthy years, and lower infant mortality. I see no reason to innovate or theorize about what people "should" do, given how horrible our current system is, we should simply copy some other country's system. We are NOT the experts, and we should quit pretending that we know what we are talking about with all our moralizing and free-market prattle, and we should learn from what works in other countries.

Re: Obama Care

[TooMuchToDo]

And this is different from how your current insurance provider treats you now? "You smoke? Extra fee. You ever have cancer? Extra fee".

The only people I've ever run into who have a problem with "ObamaCare" are ignorant assholes (and republicans, but they're in the same group).

Fat Tony,"I predict you're going to the hospital

[CrazyJim1]

Contest judge,"Why I'm perfectly healthy, why would you pick me?"
Fat Tony: *punch to the face of contest judge*
Contest judge,"Well I see your point, but that isn't exactly going to send me to the hospital."
Fat Tony: *draws a gun*
Contest Judge,"Ok ok, I'll go to the hospital, here's your money."
Fat Tony,"Who says I want your money?"

Re:Hackers?

[Haedrian]

The original meaning of 'to hack' was 'to do something clever'.

So a "Computer Hacker" is "A person who knows how to do something clever with a computer". A data hacker would be something like that.

Then the media misunderstood Hacker culture and now Hacker == Cracker in their ontology

the western approach to health: completely broken

[nido]

In a way, doctors are trained to ignore teh science. They start with someone who already has a problem, and treat the symptoms as best they can. Science has determined many of the causes, but they are not profitable for the oligarchy, so they train our doctors to sell us pills for the symptoms.

somebody with diabetes, hypertension and high cholesterol is a 90 per cent risk for hospitalization. Knowing this, it might be cheaper for an HMO to enroll them in an exercise program now rather than pay the likely hospital bill.

The Lipid Peroxidation chain reaction is a large part of what causes the diabetes, hypertension and [oxidized] cholesterol problems.

Lipid peroxidation is such a huge problem today because the western world switched its main sources of dietary fats from animals (mostly saturated butter/lard) to seeds (mostly polyunsaturated corn/soy/rapeseed/linseed)... And even the animals we eat aren't as healthy as they once were because now they subsists on seeds instead of grass/insects/etc.

This contest is a waste of time.

Re: Obama Care

[Altus]

Current insurance providers would just drop your ass.

Re: Obama Care

[TooMuchToDo]

Exactly. My point to GPP was, "You have no farking idea what you're talking about."

Laughable

[infinite9]

The competition challenges data hackers to build algorithms that predict who will go to the hospital in the next year, so that they can be dropped.

fixed.

Re:Laughable

[geekoid]

"Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. "

That , my friend, is the basics for a disaster.

Most people don't known how to do research, don't know a well done study vs a poorly done study. Most people will only cherry pick data that confirms their own bias.

Plus it will be done in a manner without review.

Learn how to read a study, learn what makes an actual expert, and pay attention.

Re: Obama Care

[Stregano]

I love the reform haters. Here is a little story that happened to me: I found a lump near my booty hole. I am only 28, so that is pretty scary. I went to get it checked out for cancer. I had a colonoscopy (you know, what you get when you are 50). Well it cleaned out my system good enough for my gall stones to spout up and hurt alot. Remember, I am 28 and am in decent health. Within a 2 week span, I went to the doctor, had a colonscopy, went to the emergency room, had my gall bladder removed, then was bed ridden in the hospital for 5 days.

I got out on a Thursday, went back to work on the following Monday. I had to. How else am I going to pay for this? I am still making payments on it.

Maybe I wiped too hard or something, but that chain of events, then me going back to work so soon, yeah, not good. Now under what you call "ObamaCare" I would not still be paying this because once I had my colonscopy, guess what, even with a clean record of good health before this, they jacked my premiums through the roof.

Oh wait, urgent delivery:

Dear person who does not support the Health Care Reform,
We regret to inform you that we thought it would be a great idea to jack up your premiums making excuses for it. Even if the health reform is not even in place, we are going to go ahead and use that as an excuse to boost your premiums up. Also, please be aware that once you have insurance through us, if you have a salary job, regardless of what you go to the doctor for, we will go ahead and boost your premiums again.

Thank You again for supporting us and Being Republican,
Big Insurance Company

Algorithms

[HomelessInLaJolla]

Why don't they just build a lottery machine to approximate it and sell another lottery game at convenience stores? Let people pay to run around going to all of the stores to find the algorithm which most correctly approximates the data.

Easy

[tomthepom]

Probability of visiting a hospital in the next year P

P = R

Where R = 1 if

- you ride a motorbike
- you're one of (bullfighter, boxer, lumberjack, cheerleader)
- you consume more than 30 hamburgers per week
- you consume more than 1 bottle of whiskey a day or equivalent

Now where's my 3 million?

Re:FAIL from the start

[Manfre]

BMI is a flawed measure of health. Weightlifters have a higher BMI than average and some are deemed obese based upon their BMI.

New Title:

[NoKaOi]

"Health Insurance company offers $3 million dollar bounty for technical-sounding excuse to raise premiums"

Re:New Title:

[hedwards]

That's what they're hoping for. I'm fortunate enough to live in a state where the insurance commissioner has to approve rate increases. Which means that when an insurance company wants to raise premiums they have to provide the commissioner's office with the data that shows that it's reasonable from an actuarial stand point. Fortunately, this is now much more widespread as of the beginning of the year now that all insurance companies have to spend at least 80% of their premiums on care or improving the health of the customers and 85% for those issuing group policies. Unless they can demonstrate why they can't do it.

It's going to take a while for these measures to make an impact on health insurance costs, but it will eventually fix the problem when taken with the other changes.

Carbohydrate intake

[hsthompson69]

Just measure carbohydrate intake. That correlates with all of the "diseases of civilization", like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, alzheimer's and other chronic diseases.

Re:Carbohydrate intake

[ColdWetDog]

Just measure carbohydrate intake. That correlates with all of the "diseases of civilization", like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, alzheimer's and other chronic diseases.

Of course! It's just that simple. Why didn't anybody think of that sooner?

You need to read up on human diseases a bit more. And no, you cannot jump from rodent longevity using caloric restriction to broad brushing carbohydrates as the boogyman for western health care issues.

Re:Carbohydrate intake

[hsthompson69]

Well, we did think about this sooner, but thanks the Ancel Keys, and his 7 countries study (that ignored data from another dozen or so countries that confounded his hypothesis), we've mistakenly pushed the low-fat/semi-starvation dogma for the past 40 years.

The simple fact of the matter is that the chronic diseases of civilization are caused by high insulin levels in humans, and the primary driver of those insulin levels is carbohydrate intake.

Cites: Gary Taubes, "Good Calories, Bad Calories" - you can find a summary here: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/event_details.php?webcastid=21216

Re: Obama Care

[aethogamous]

Dear Non-Obama Health Care Customer

We have identified you as a high risk patient.

Good bye.

Re:the western approach to health: completely brok

[geekoid]

"In a way, doctors are trained to ignore teh science. They start with someone who already has a problem, and treat the symptoms as best they can. Science has determined many of the causes, but they are not profitable for the oligarchy, so they train our doctors to sell us pills for the symptoms"

that is completely false. While may Dr.s are not scientists, they still prefer to cure someone. It's a lie perpetrated by people whose own 'belief' aren't born out scientifically. Since they are so attached to them they invoke conspiracy that are nonsense.

"The Lipid Peroxidation [wikipedia.org] chain reaction is a large part of what causes the diabetes, hypertension and [oxidized] cholesterol problems.":
That is complete nonsense.

speaking of doctors and science:

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/

Re:Hackers?

[martin-boundary]

Is that now synonymous with programmers?

Get with the times will you, this is Web 2.0!

(Old name) --> (New name)

Webmonkey --> Application programmer

Programmer --> Hacker

Hacker --> Terrorist

Hacker competition

[formfeed]

I like how everyone and their uncle suddenly runs a competition with a grand prize for the lucky one who meets the goal.

Need a new company logo? You could hire a graphic designer. Or you run a design competition, first prize an iPad. Much cheaper than paying someone, and the blogs will pick it up for free advertisement. Then you shell out the shinny gadget and look charitable.

Anyone interested in a basement-cleanup-competition?

Re:Hacker competition

[geekoid]

Depends, what's the prize?

Re:Hacker competition

[hedwards]

Yeah, if it's a sizable prize it can be worthwhile, but most of the time they're giving out trinkets in exchange for a potentially large amount of wasted effort. The fame is really the only worthwhile prize from some of these competitions. And even then you'd be better off just giving the product away or selling it after you've finished it.

Re:the western approach to health: completely brok

[nido]

Nice that you linked to a (semi-) reputable source for the definition of lipid peroxidation. Can you do the same for the dietary and medical claims?

Suitable Fats, Unsuitable Fats: Issues in Nutrition has a nice list of references. I'd start there.

Re:the western approach to health: completely brok

[nido]

While may Dr.s are not scientists, they still prefer to cure someone.

Of course, but their training is deficient. If you spend years learning the minutia of pharmacology and surgery, it's easy to "miss the forest for the trees". If your doctor's training only gives a cursory overview of the role of nutrition, AND the conventional wisdom about certain nutritional concepts is wrong (e.g. saturated fats were vilified so A.D.M. can make billions selling seed oils), your doctor is going to be biased for the things that he spent the majority of his training learning about.

The Lipid Peroxidation [wikipedia.org] chain reaction is a large part of what causes the diabetes, hypertension and [oxidized] cholesterol problems.

That is complete nonsense.

Are you defending the mass consumption of rancid oils? I think you are. All "vegetable" oils are deodorized as a part of the production process.

Oxidative rancidity is associated with the degradation by oxygen in the air. Via a free radical process, the double bonds of an unsaturated fatty acid can undergo cleavage, releasing volatile aldehydes and ketones. This process can be suppressed by the exclusion of oxygen or by the addition of antioxidants. Oxidation primarily occurs with unsaturated fats. -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rancidification

It's hard to exclude oxygen from a biological system. Which leaves antioxidants, and it takes a lot of antioxidants to deal with the massive quantities of polyunsaturated oils in a person's weekly servings of A.D.M. soybean-oil-based Kraft salad dressing.

Your tone was pretty rude, so I'm going to have to refer you to my response to the anonymous poster, who politely asked for a substantiating link for the health claims.

Re:FAIL from the start

[tysonedwards]

But professional body builders and athletes (the only groups where BMI has been measurably incorrect) only make up 0.00004% of the world population.

I got a good algorithm

[Nyder]

Population - Population that will die = Chances of them making an algorithm that predicts Health Problems Correctly for Individuals.

Individual fools.

[HornWumpus]

Smart individual buyers join a professional or other organization that has their own group.

IEEE makes you wait a year to get into their health insurance group. It's worth joining while you have a job so you have backup group insurance available.

Re:Individual fools.

[praxis]

That's very good advice. My point was that for groups of "known" quantities they ask for far less information than for random individuals. Not everyone falls into the "they hardly know anything about you" camp.

Re:the western approach to health: completely brok

[nido]

Give me buttermilk+mayo+herbs over the 40 ingredients in this crap they provide under the branding "natural" something or other ranch dressing.

Yeah, except most mayo's are made with the same Soybean oil... I made mayo with olive oil once, but it was a little work.

Thanks for writing though. I definitely agree with your sentiment about "natural" branding for certain products. :)

Two Problems

[Fnord666]

From TFA

"There are two problems with the healthcare reform law," said Jonathan Gluck, a senior executive at HPN. "We pay for quantity, not quality. The more services provided, the more the provider gets paid."

The second is that we can't count to two.

a little late for your gall bladder...

[nido]

but Cayce had a strategy to flush out the gall bladder every so often. It involved eating raw apples and only raw apples for up to three days. On the last day of the apple diet, you'd take 3 tablespoons to 1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil.

When the body subsists on a fat-free diet for long enough, the gall bladder stocks up on bile. When a large quantity of oil suddenly appears in the small intestine, the gallbladder's contents are dumped out to help break down the oil. If one has any stones,

Even though you don't have the gall bladder anymore, you'd probably still benefit from the pectin (fiber) and malic acid in the raw apples. With that said, some people don't do well with large quantities of apples, so talk to your doctor to see if this would be appropriate...

I guess I'm a "reform hater" too, but only because I think "reform" should make the medical system more effective. See my other post in this story, the western approach to medicine is completely broken.

Anecdotal Data driven Algorithm

[woodsrunner]

By my algorithm you'd be forced to get another doctor that wasn't a waster or pay more. Okay, maybe it's simple, but it is effective which I can prove with personal experience.

Here's the algorithm:

If ((you can pass your doctor on the street) && (they don't recognize you)){
you = in trouble;
}else{
you = good;
}

Here's the anecdotal proof:

A few years ago life seemed to be really coming together. Happily married, just bought my favorite house in the area, was coding like a rock star and arguably the healthiest person in the office. Didn't smoke, drink or eat restaurant food. Also, was riding my bike 100 k / day round trip to work and getting really into carving out a perfect life putting one good day in after the next.

Like you, my doctor was a tosser but I figured, I'm fine.

A cold snap before Thanksgiving caught me off guard and got a slight chill. No big deal. But spent the long holiday in bed and went to see my doctor on Monday. He hardly looked at me, not tests just said I had strep gave me a mega dose of antibiotics and a note for my boss.

Swell. My neck it did. The pills did nothing. Called and to get another appointment. But just got more pills. I was feeling like crap. Felt like my doctor's nurse wasn't even relaying my messages. It was futile to rely on him so I went into the walk in clinic and saw a physician's assistant. He walked in and saw right away what was what. I saw it register in his eye the second he walked in the exam room after which he just blurted out he could see I had lymphoma. He had to back pedal a bit. Protocol and all. But arranged to have me see a doctor that afternoon.

Went home for lunch and they called from the hospital to see if I could come in sooner. So that could be another calculation, if you wait less time to be seen your fucked. Scratch that, they'll use that as an excuse to extend waiting.

Soon I was diagnosed Stage 4B. They don't say terminal any more. And why should they, you've gotta enough to deal with surgeries. Well they could have done em all at once because my surgeon could see what needed to be done but that's not approved by my apparently top notch insurance.

It just seemed so unreal. One day I'm making back of the envelope calculations from the numbers out of my Garmin that if I kept at it and focused I could be competitive enough to ride the pursuit in the next Olympics in London and then it turns out I just had an unnaturally high red blood cell count that any pro cyclist would covet because I had cancer. Did working out help me? I'd like to think so. Like to think maybe my training didn't get me to the Olympics but allowed me to survive. But maybe it did me in. My fat smoking sister didn't get cancer.

Another data you could use but would require surveillence to gather would be the number of doctors, nurses, cleaning ladies and orderlies who sublty as John Cleese wink wink nudge nudge advise you to not use more than one dose of Fentalyn patch as two would kill you, that's an indication that you might soon cease to be.

Another good data point they might want to focus on is the coincidence of spending a month in isolation because you've got like zero white blood cells and corresponding occurences for getting written up for tasks you failed to complete while on disability. Getting fired for taking too many sick days would be a potential data point to calculate in the algorithm as well.

Here's the thing. What ever happened to duty? I must have been focusing on doing my job and missed it but at some point the word lost meaning and worse is now the new euphamism for #2. I mean what kind of business model is it that puts the burden of performance on the customer? I had never heard of fentalyn before, but suspect that so many people know what it is is because they are as high as the arrogant shites who would abrocate responsibility to fluff up their bottom line long tail be damned.

So maybe my anecd

Re:Anecdotal Data driven Algorithm

[Paul Fernhout]

Check out Dr. Fuhrman's nutritional approach to boost your immunity (the immune system both deals with infeciton diseases and also kills cancer cells where adults have been said to get one cancer cell a day that the immune system needs to zap):
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
    http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/healthy-food-dr-fuhrmans-anticancer-solution.html

Essentially, his approach entails resensitizing your taste buds (see the book "The Pleasure Trap") to enjoy eating a lot of vegetables, fruits, and beans (and some nuts, seeds, and whole grains, and a few supplements with a multivitamin, vitamin D, and sometimes some others).

Also, make sure you have your vitamin D and iodine levels checked, as both can relate to cancer. (Look up iodine 4 health and the vitamin D council).

Best of look keeping cancer and other illness at bay. If you do a good job at that with good nutrition (and some exercise, getting enough sleep, having good social interactions, and so on), your doctor may not recognize you. :-)

See also:
    http://www.ravediet.com/caResources.html
   

my algo is as follows

[oliverthered]

1: Get doctors to start to build an expert system for diagnosing patients &co using things like speech recognission to assist in recording absolutely everything that is said in the consultation, all questions and answers, symptoms, checks and results, all crys of pain etc...
2: Along side this do random, regular blood etc.. screens to get other hard data.
3: Also take some pictures and that kind of thing.
4: possibly contact IBM for their jepodoy winning kit too.
5: Combine all the expertise and amendements to the data that created the expert system, along with medication given and taken, diet details, recreational drug usage, blood screens, exercise, weight, stool samples whatever etc... across all patients all doctors and possibly the world.
building an expert system, that records absolutely everything, not just the things that usually get recorded. and allows doctors to put on what they did to delta the reported symptoms and the computer suggested treatment and diagnosis to further improve the computer assistance and expert system.
7: Data mine the hell out of it.
8: You now have yourself, real time or as near real time, ready to hand, scientific, empirical medical data and research like the best drugs trial in the world with sample sizes of millions and the knowledge and experteese of all the Mds and without screening people like autistics out of the equation.

Oh, as a bonus you get to get all those horrid side effects reported properly and get to find out exactly what the illicit drugs do to you.... and no lies or fabrication on medical records.

There you go, that's my algorythm.. where's the dollar. I'm gona spend it on a gramma and spelling nazi to check my posts.

Re:Hackers?

[turgid]

Is that now synonymous with programmers?

It always was. It's the other meaning that's wrong.

Let economics work for you

[noidentity]

Instead of making it cheaper for a person to ignore his health, make it more expensive. Have high deductibles so that he's better off taking preventive measures than having to be hospitalized and paying a high deductible. Or I suppose you could just make it so hospital visits were guaranteed 100% fatal...