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How Big Data Is Destroying the US Healthcare System
KindMind writes "Robert Cringely writes on the idea that technological advances have changed the health care system, and not for the better. The idea is that companies now rate individuals instead of groups, and so move to a mode of simply avoiding policies that might lose money, instead of the traditional way that insurance costs were spread over a group. From the article: 'Then in the 1990s something happened: the cost of computing came down to the point where it was cost-effective to calculate likely health outcomes on an individual basis. This moved the health insurance business from being based on setting rates to denying coverage. In the U.S. the health insurance business model switched from covering as many people as possible to covering as few people as possible — selling insurance only to healthy people who didn't much need the healthcare system.'"
Insurance companies can do what they like - who are we to tell them what policies they can and cannot agree to? Furthermore, by keeping the future-sick out of the pool, they lower costs for the patriotically healthy.
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That will require a government solution. Either laws preventing health insurance companies from turning down coverage on individuals in that manner, or an actual heath care system for all and an end to regular private insurance.
Or we can go full capitalist and just get rid of health insurance, then the cost of heathcare will have no choice but come down because almost no one will be able to afford the service (causing the providers to go out of business).
It's to their credit that we as a culture see them as the gateway to health care, and they have done many, many things to insure that people don't interact directly with providers, but in the end, they are middlemen. Nothing more. They do not provide care. Doctors, nurses, clinics and hospitals do. And, given the current state of things, they have done nothing to control costs.
Big Data isn't destroying the US health system. It's the lack of coverage, for-profit insurance protecting their margins by charging everyone more and more to do less and less, to deny payment (and therefore care) so that people get so sick that they lose their jobs and their coverage, passing on the burden to providers and taxpayers that, by law, can not deny essential care. It's a system that only pays up when absolutely necessary, that does not to help people stay off of the doctor's office.
It's a culture that insists that chronic illness or disability is a moral failing and that it is the fault of the person for merely being ill. It's the insistence that health is a privilege, not a right. It's not some computing trend that insurance companies are using to discriminate. Insurance companies have been doing that forever.
The ability to deny coverage to higher risk individuals has been eliminated with Obamacare, and that's a good thing. If you are filthy rich you cover yourself. If you are poor you are covered by the government. If you were middle class and had some health condition you were screwed if you didn't have employer-based insurance. It didn't take much to be denied - things like macular degeneration or asthma or hyperthyroidism would deny you. One big sickness away from bankruptcy. In the richest country in the world.
We'd better get used to things being more "personalized," this is what we're moving to.
Various economic (and business) theorists have pointed out that this is part of a general pattern that's well understood: Insurance is based on spreading the cost of unpredictable events over a population, so that the victims of such events aren't bankrupt/homeless/dead/whatever if a disaster hits them. Insurance is basically a gambling game. If an event becomes predictable, insurance no longer works, since only those susceptible to a disaster will want insurance, but the insurance companies will refuse to sell policies to exactly those people.
A classical textbook example is flood insurance. There are many cases where the probability of a disastrous flood event has become predictable. The people and companies in the high-risk area want insurance, but the price is so high that a policy will bankrupt them. Such "insurance" can then only be provided by the government, but in reality, it's more in the nature of planned disaster prevention/recovery than insurance.
Various other theorists studying the medical field have been predicting that this will rapidly happen in medicine, too. Medical insurance made sense when most diseases were poorly understood, and it was impossible to predict with any accuracy who might be susceptible to which medial problems.
But we are getting more knowledgeable about such things. Medical problems are becoming much more predictable in general, and many major medical tests have much better accuracy than a few decades ago. Again, the inevitable result is that insurance companies will get access to the information, and will refuse to sell coverage (or will price it at bankruptcy levels) to people whose tests predict imminent medical problems. Eventually, this will mean all of us. This is how insurance has always worked, and medical insurance is not significantly different.
(Well, except for the fact that we know the exact probability that each of us will eventually have a major medical problem: 100% ;-)
Insurance isn't medical care. it's what insurance always is: a way of spreading the cost around in an unpredictable world. It only helps if the problems are unpredictable, but don't hit everyone. Medical problems are becoming more predictable, so medical insurance is slowly becoming irrelevant and unworkable.
In summary: The real problem here is using "insurance" to pay for health care. We don't need insurance; we need health care. As medical knowledge improves, the insurers will do what they always do: They'll collect premiums until just before you are likely to need something expensive, and then they'll refuse to renew your coverage. That's how their business works, when knowledge becomes available and the results of a gamble can be predicted. The "Free Market" system rewards companies that get good at this, and those that aren't as good go out of business.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Any successful business man will tell you that there is such a thing as a customer you don't want. Ones that tie up your employees and resources are bad. It's only when you're selling commodities with a fixed price and a high turnover rate (Milk, eggs, oil, beer) that you can take all comers.
At the risk of being modded troll, let me say that that's the trouble with Capitalism. The real world doesn't fit into it's principles and ideas. Health care is too complex and purchased too rarely to make Capitalism a good fit for acquiring it. The classic example is that it's tough to comparison shop on a heart transplant....
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No, looking at it from the outside [I'm not in/from the US, and rarely visit], the Republican's seems entirely against it because Obama is for it. They can only win if Obama and the Democrats lose. How it affects the American public is a distant second.
For example, way back, the Democrats tried to start healthcare reform with "Lets start with the proposal John McCain publicly came forward with during his run for the Presidency." Republicans response "No".
They are unable in any way, shape or form of publicly saying ANY aspect of the ACA is good, simply because it was put forward by a Democrat.
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Health insurance companies couldn't drop people when the customer gets sick prior to the ACA. The change is that they now can't deny coverage for previously existing conditions.
Its good for some little guys, however its bad for the majority of little guys. Some people will get coverage who otherwise would not have. The rest of us will have higher premiums.
That's pretty much the definition of insurance. Yes, you pay more than you likely would have to, but you don't get catastrophicaly screwed if you are 'that guy'. When you write 'the rest of us', you are assuming that you are the heathly person, and not the one with the previously existing condition. You don't know that. It might be true right now, but that could change tomorrow, based on some test or event.
Further, your analysis assumese that the costs for a person without an existing condition just disappear. They don't. That person, who possibly can't get insurance, ends up in the hospital anyway, and then costs are shared by everybody else because your insurance pays for it in higher hospital costs. When you go to the hospital, it costs $100 rather than $50 because there is $50 added for uninsured people. It's even worse than that because it's a hidden cost. You don't know what percent of that $100 is cost of treatment and how much is overhead cost by uninsured. Better to have everybody covered, your insurance go up by a little and then the hospital costing $50.
The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.
As a Canadian, here's the thing I don't get about the American "fear" of single-payer health care system : "Oh my god, the paperwork! And the bureaucrats that deny care!"
Now here's how it works for a Canadian : You go see a doctor, you give them your single-payer card and... That's it. There's no additional charges or paperwork to fill out, no administrative useless bullcrap. Heck I got surgery done a few years back and all I had to do was to show up at the hospital on time and show them my little card. No cash needed, no bill, just care.