Why Sleep Apnea Patients Rely On a Lone, DRM-Breaking CPAP Machine Hacker (vice.com)

Jason Koebler writes: "SleepyHead" is a free, open-source, and definitely not FDA-approved piece of software for sleep apnea patients that is the product of thousands of hours of hacking and development by a lone Australian developer named Mark Watkins, who has helped thousands of sleep apnea patients take back control of their treatment from overburdened and underinvested doctors. The software gives patients access to the sleep data that is already being generated by their CPAP machines but generally remains inaccessible, hidden by DRM and proprietary data formats that can only be read by authorized users (doctors) on proprietary pieces of software that patients often can't buy or download. SleepyHead and community-run forums like CPAPtalk.com and ApneaBoard.com have allowed patients to circumvent medical device manufacturers, who would prefer that the software not exist at all. Medical device manufacturers fought in 2015 to prevent an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to legalize hacking by patients who wanted to access their own data, but an exemption was granted, legalizing SleepyHead and software like it.

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Re: AND... buy Chinese

[squiggleslash]

Reworded:

1. Eliminate oversight and quality control.
2. Eliminate oversight and quality control
3. Remove the ability of people to pay for healthcare with the exception of the very lowest, cheapest, part of the system. Eliminate access to hospitals and emergency care for everyone except the super rich.
4. Remove all privacy controls and ensure your private healthcare information is available to anyone who wants it, from employers to banks to marketing firms.
5. Only require that people be told the costs of their procedures immediately before the procedure is due to happen. Make no attempt to ensure costs are managable, affordable, or clear.
6. Reduce the costs of procedures by 1-2% by ensuring that anyone injured as a result of a doctor making a mistake has no recourse.

I'm not sure that "Removing access to" is the same thing as "Fix", but if that's your definition, then sure, yeah, your six points will do that.

Alternative idea: we copy the British NHS. Costs 1/3 per person of the American system, much more effective. The NHS has its faults, but note that the British system doesn't ban private healthcare, it just makes it mostly unnecessary.