RE: Hunt says NHS problems 'unacceptable'
February 13, 2017 at 2:33 pm
(This post was last modified: February 13, 2017 at 2:35 pm by Aristocatt.)
Limiting treatment to individuals for poor life decisions probably isn't the best way to prevent people from making those choices. It's an indirect long term cost that the individual is unlikely to fully realize while they are making that choice.
Directly taxing unhealthy decisions, or subsidizing healthy ones seems like a much better way to go about doing it.
The taxes one should be obvious, but subsidizing healthy decisions doesn't have to be in the form of direct government subsidies to healthy lifestyle choices...that could come with a whole bundle of it's own issues.
I did a hackathon for a health provider in Virginia. The idea my team had was to do something called proactive healthcare cost reductions.
Basically I used image recognition software to review grocery bills, tracked fitbit data, track gym memberships, and provided an API for people to do an opt in program to allow doctors to provide medical records like yearly physical examinations. It was a two day hackathon, so we didn't build the whole app, but we built a gui for a bit of it, and did the image recognition part. We didn't win the hackathon, it was too ambitious for the small health care provider to incorporate, but it was one of 2 runner ups.
Healthy lifestyle choices tend to create a positive feedback loop on the individual(same with unhealthy lifestyle choices) where constantly reminding yourself to say just eat a fruit in the morning, also tends to put you into a mindset that will make you less likely to want to smoke a cigarette, or drink a lot of beer, later in the day. That's assuming the individual recognizes the fruit as a healthy decision and the cigarette as an unhealthy one consciously.
I'm not an expert on this kind of stuff, that hackathon was my first real dive into the world of healthcare outside of casual reading, but it's pretty interesting nonetheless. There are a lot of options out there, but limiting coverage to people who make poor decisions early in life that will only effect them much later in life, seems like a low hanging fruit that won't be particularly effective. It will just mean more suffering for people later in life, and it won't do a very good job disincentivizing young people from making poor decisions. If there were a liquidity issue in England right now I would understand needing to make tough choices, but I'm not sure that's the case.
Directly taxing unhealthy decisions, or subsidizing healthy ones seems like a much better way to go about doing it.
The taxes one should be obvious, but subsidizing healthy decisions doesn't have to be in the form of direct government subsidies to healthy lifestyle choices...that could come with a whole bundle of it's own issues.
I did a hackathon for a health provider in Virginia. The idea my team had was to do something called proactive healthcare cost reductions.
Basically I used image recognition software to review grocery bills, tracked fitbit data, track gym memberships, and provided an API for people to do an opt in program to allow doctors to provide medical records like yearly physical examinations. It was a two day hackathon, so we didn't build the whole app, but we built a gui for a bit of it, and did the image recognition part. We didn't win the hackathon, it was too ambitious for the small health care provider to incorporate, but it was one of 2 runner ups.
Healthy lifestyle choices tend to create a positive feedback loop on the individual(same with unhealthy lifestyle choices) where constantly reminding yourself to say just eat a fruit in the morning, also tends to put you into a mindset that will make you less likely to want to smoke a cigarette, or drink a lot of beer, later in the day. That's assuming the individual recognizes the fruit as a healthy decision and the cigarette as an unhealthy one consciously.
I'm not an expert on this kind of stuff, that hackathon was my first real dive into the world of healthcare outside of casual reading, but it's pretty interesting nonetheless. There are a lot of options out there, but limiting coverage to people who make poor decisions early in life that will only effect them much later in life, seems like a low hanging fruit that won't be particularly effective. It will just mean more suffering for people later in life, and it won't do a very good job disincentivizing young people from making poor decisions. If there were a liquidity issue in England right now I would understand needing to make tough choices, but I'm not sure that's the case.
