COVID19 may kill medicare and ACA

The insurance against possible non-contagious conditions may not deliver what was promised if a contagious event occurs, and the medicine for contagious diseases do not promise a very impressive recovery rate. With COVID19, we learned that our health care premiums do not guarantee access to health care when we need it.

COVID19: assessing our healthcare system

We once had a medical system that can competently manage epidemics.   We discarded it to make room for the managed-condition healthcare system we have now.   Our system has proved that it cannot tolerate an epidemic, something that history tells us is a fact of nature.   As a result, when an epidemic appears, we have to stop everything until a vaccine can make it go away. 

Medical Privacy and Pandemic Privacy

Given the established one-size fits all medical policies, we have no choice but to allow the general population only to know general counts of cases and outcomes with no additional information such as precise locations and the specific age or other characteristics of that location’s patient.   I ask whether there has ever been a time when anyone in government has seriously defended this approach with a serious consideration that an epidemic could actually happen before the collapse of society.

Some thoughts on Net Neutrality

There is an inconsistency on advocating for Net Neutrality for Internet access while advocating for non-Neutrality for medical provider networks.    At some level, both are dealing with the same fundamental problem of needing to trade-off the cost and delivery of satisfactory content.   I’m content with the choice of having non-Neutrality for medical networks.  I do not see the value of having Internet access options being restricted to a much higher Neutrality standard than what I accept for health care.

Affording health insurance

I have been spending a lot of time trying to rationalize the increase in health insurance premiums that I’ll have to pay in 2017.  The new rate will be more than double the rate for 2016, and more than 5 times what it was before affordable care act was passed. To be fair, this increase…

Dedomenocratic Party response to recent announcement to extend ACA open season

Allow me to assume all of the above can be backed by good data. The Dedomenocratic Party would have the data to gain their support for the second open enrollment period, but it’s support also depends on evidence of urgency. The urgency is that this is a very unique opportunity over all subsequent years and this opportunity closes at the end of the current tax filing season.

Affordable Care Act: challenging the definition of insurance

That uncertainty is gone at the time of filing for a tax. For many people, it is at this time of certainty of health-care needs for prior year that they now must confront a higher cost of the premiums they had been enjoying. It is nonsensical to claim that they must now pay premiums for past insurance. The present payments are not buying insurance because there is no longer anything to insure against. As far as the individual is concerned, he has already paid the fair price of the insurance. The repayment cost is instead a tax penalty (or a fine) that requires a different justification than paying for insurance.

Authoritarianism by data: the obligation to participate

To realize the benefits of big data analytics (descriptive, predictive, or prescriptive), we need to obligate everyone to participate in order to be measured in order to avoid the selection biases for those analytics. In many cases, this participation requires following the recommended course of actions so that we can measure the results to tune the algorithms. In some sense we need an obedient population to follow the recommendations of big data analytics in much the same way that authoritarian regimes demand.