Ask HN: Can healthcare (hospitalization and outpatient) be fixed? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Can healthcare (hospitalization and outpatient) be fixed?

Over the 4 to 5 yrs of being a health advocate (?) for a family member, I've witnessed a well-meaning but generally dated healthcare system. Aside from the ICU, hospital stays have been 75% transactional cookie-cutter diagnosis and 25% treating the patient (not just the symptoms). Outpatient? Mainly smart trained professionals effectively reading mindlessly from a script.

Futhermore, foundational health must-haves such as nutritional meals and quality sleep are consistently bad. How can you get well if these "essential services" are out of step with current science?

The experience has been both frustrating and dumbfounding. Is this all that will be?

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You don't mention your country, and I expect experiences will vary based on location. I will assume US though.

Can heathcare be fixed? Yes. But the first step is in general acknowledgement that it's broken. The message propogated in the US is that the US has the "best health service in the world."[1]

As long as that is the general concensus then what is there to fix? There are alternative systems in the world and some are better than the one in the US. But to improve the US system you first need to acknowledge that.

[1] "best" is a subjective measure, and depends on your goals. Certainly it is the most profitable (aka expensive) health care system in the world, so if you are a health care _provider_ it is by far the best. And if you have enough money to spend you can get great care. So best there as well. Perhaps with national health though there are alternative criteria that could be applied which might lead to different understandings of "best".

Yes. USA. Good catch. Sorry about that.

> Futhermore, foundational health must-haves such as nutritional meals and quality sleep are consistently bad. How can you get well if these "essential services" are out of step with current science?

Fix these for society in general and the results will permeate to the hospitals. Hospital meals are shit as bulk low cost meals in general that comply with allergy needs and do not spoil are shit.

I agree. But also, why don't insurance companies make payment contingent upon best practices? It's baffling that Entity I who wants to maximize results let's Entity H intentionally overlook ththe easy and obvious.

As long as someone else is paying the bills, health care will remain an exercise in extracting as much from the bill payers.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21728864

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