I kinda wish Hacker News would skip the political articles. There are plenty of technical things about health care to cover (e.g. databases for health, clinical trials, input cost reduction).
That being said, I lived under US government health care for a goodly chunk of my life (IHS), and until they fix that, they really have no biz working on anything else.
IHS is the Indian Health Service? They don't care about that because Indians have no political power. It's unbelievable the kind of corruption and incompetence that exists inside that agency.
FWIW, Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, and medical care for soldiers are all pretty good on the US scale.
FWIW, Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, and medical care for soldiers are all pretty good on the US scale.
Ahoyhere's comment isn't the half of it. The incident happened at Walter Reed Army Hospital, which is the same place that US president's usually go for care. If stuff like that could happen there (it may have been a different branch in DC), what's the rest of the system going to be like?
I worked for a medical software company for seven years, converting Medicare specs for outpatient code editing into working programs. We would get regulatory updates once a quarter, make changes to the code and the data, test and ship. The fun part was that we would usually receive the reg changes 3 weeks before the hospitals had to have the updated application. Also, their reference application didn't match what was written in the specs. Worst of all, the spec changes were often unreadable and we would have to call DC to figure out what they meant. It will not surprise many of you to learn that they wouldn't know either and would "have to get back to us". I could go on and on...
Really? The VA? Did you miss all the scandals about the Walter Reed medical base in DC, where soldiers were mistreated, ignored and neglected, and even one killed himself in his room and no one noticed for 2 days? The hospital had no idea until his parents called and forced them to look for their missing son. This was a guy who was evacuated due to a semi-suicide attempt, and they didn't even bother to monitor him. Shameful.
Not to mention the older vets, especially from Vietnam. They are screwed at every turn and the previous administration cut their benefits even more.
The Walter Reed scandal would really reinforce what people have been saying about for profit healthcare.
Walter Reed is a huge military complex with Army and contractor buildings on the base. Most vets that go to Walter Reed end up under the military care. This is the old colonial style buildings that most people see. They are in pretty good shape and most vets don't have a complaint about Army care. The real fiasco is the private contractors. This is the part of Walter Reed people read about in the paper. They work under VA but since they are for-profit companies, you know the rest.
People like to use Walter Reed of why the gov't shouldn't get into healthcare at all. Walter Reed is an example of why private, healthcare companies have no business being in healthcare.
Great clarification. I lived 10 minutes away from there - and it was on the news all the time - but I never heard that side of the story. Very illuminating.
That being said, I lived under US government health care for a goodly chunk of my life (IHS), and until they fix that, they really have no biz working on anything else.