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Comment by gpvos | Hacker News Reader

The story goes that in China, doctors used to be paid for keeping you healthy. When you got sick, they didn't get any money anymore. This sounds to me like a system with the proper incentives.

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Isn't this just like paying insurance premiums ?

Whenever you are sick, the doctor / insurance company loses money curing you.

It's similar, but it wouldn't be profitable anymore for doctors to prescribe more medicines or other treatments. Probably the doctors would need to take out insurance instead of the patients.

By that logic, developer should not be paid if there is a bug in the systems. Besides formal methods that is always the case.

With subscription model bugs don't generate income.

Really? Because then I would just take on young healthy patients and refuse to take on sick ones.

So you would need to restrict Drs ability to turn people away.

That sounds like the stupidest idea, unless doctors are given the right and ability to control your activities and diet, and who you breed with or are bred from to avoid genetic defects.

I would just lie and say all of my patients were healthy. This may be even more flawed

Cute, but problematic when you need palliative care for a chronic condition.

Yes, once you got a really terminal disease the doctor would probably drop you like a brick. But you could fix that by having a contract from the beginning that says they are still obligated to treat you. Either that, or a separate solution would be needed.

Sounds like doctor-as-insurer, financially speaking.

Healthy people are less willing to pay :-(

This is a very narrow view. The usa is not the world

But they pay for insurance.

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