Comment by TheAceOfHearts | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TheAceOfHearts | Hacker News Reader

The MrBeast video where he pays for people's eye surgery felt icky to me and it took me a while to really figure out why. On one hand, I think it's great that people in need were able to receive assistance. On the other hand, why is it that it took some rich YouTuber to pay for their surgeries in the first place? As I understand it a lot of these eye surgeries have been fairly standard for decades, so why isn't there already a government program that pays for this? No paperwork or other bullshit, you just go to an eye doctor and they give you the surgery. It seems like such obvious low-hanging fruit, and it would be a massive political win. Maybe manufacture one fewer jet to pay for thousands of surgeries?

Maybe Medicare For All and these big medical reform programs are too ambitious and unlikely to go through. But maybe we could at least help raise the floor for what medical conditions Americans are treating by default.

If you're reading this, consider calling up your representative and telling them: "Hey, I think it's kinda crazy that we have a safe and proven surgery that lets people see, and I think it should be available for anyone that needs it, figure out how to make it work."

How many people even need these eye surgeries? I bet that raising enough money to pay for this surgery for every single American wouldn't even cost that much (in relative terms). So going the charity path would probably also be viable. However if it's something that enough people agree is worth doing, why not just use your tax dollars to pay for it? Who's going to seriously oppose a bill for giving people the ability to see?

You know what would be a win? Tuning in to the State of the Union next year and hearing: we eliminated this form of blindness from the USA.

The article says the kid tried looking into Social Security for the Blind, but "couldn't figure it out". And I guarantee you that plenty of entitlements and government grants of all sorts, especially welfare type ones, go unclaimed, because the would-be beneficiary doesn't even know about it, can't figure it out, or attempted and failed on some paperwork technicality.

I've been on federal entitlements of various types for over 20 years, and let me tell you, the paperwork and reporting requirements are onerous, and they advertise extremely punitive penalties if you don't comply. It's basically a part time job to gather up all the necessary proof of income, assets, employment, medical records, etc. and fill out the necessary forms, and then get it all filed in the right place at the right time before the deadline. And the agencies will do their best to lose all that and mess it up on their end, so you need to constantly be second-guessing them.

I'll tell you, it's far easier to go beg what you need from a charity like the St. Vincent de Paul Society. Technically, they also have income limits and other qualifications, but they're not going to put you through a scene from Brazil just to get your rent paid in an emergency.

There's a term for this very specific feeling of ickyness: the Orphan Crushing Machine. It comes from this tweet, https://twitter.com/pookleblinky/status/1309325764739858432, which reads:

> "Every heartwarming human interest story in america is like "he raised $20,000 to keep 200 orphans from being crushed in the orphan-crushing machine" and then never asks why an orphan-crushing machine exists or why you'd need to pay to prevent it from being used."

You're 100% right. It's nice that MrBeast paid for those simple and cheap surgeries to restore people's vision, and it's abhorrent that it required someone with money to decide to take that step for the problem to be solved.

> However if it's something that enough people agree is worth doing, why not just use your tax dollars to pay for it? Who's going to seriously oppose a bill for giving people the ability to see?

Unfortunately, I think the same people who oppose universal healthcare would also oppose this.

It’s also hard to draw the line on which things should be covered by the government, short of just covering all essential medical care. Curing blindness is definitely important, but people in the US literally die from not being able to afford other types of healthcare.

It’s not his fault we live in an imperfect world though… yeah it sucks but he’s objectively making it better, can’t fault him for that.

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