To quote the lead surgeon during the 6 month follow up - "I stopped looking at what we billed, and what I got paid years ago. It never made any sense to me, so I focused on the patient outcome, which did make sense to me". Great human, saved my kids life, was totally supportive afterwards and stayed in touch for a few years.
Medical practices in the USA makes no sense to me. I am Canadian.
Relevant to Simone, I have a friend who had the same problem and actually went to the same surgeon for the problem, but 5 years earlier. My son was recovered in a few days, she spent 6 months in the hospital to recover. The change was a new technique. They fixed my son through his leg, my friend had her skull removed and replaced.
Humanity can do awesome things sometimes. Sometimes great, sometimes horrid.
Now, many countries have this problem solved – for now. As the population ages, the solutions may have to change everywhere.
What I find interesting is that the discussion is almost never framed to address the actual issue: the medical industry in the US simply overcharges with impunity. I was shocked to discover that labor (as in, doctors) isn't even the biggest line item in many (most?) medical bills. Hospitals and clinics will simply crank the bill sky high and then have you or the insurance try to haggle it back down, sometimes at a 3 or 4 digits percentage difference. It's insane. There's also zero transparency on pricing, so it is difficult to shop around even if you have the time.
https://www.propublica.org/article/why-your-health-insurer-d...
Source: https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/medical-liabili...
First off, this would kill of a huge part of the open source community (the free as in beer software would all disappear). Employee contracts might be structured in such a way that the employee is responsible for any potential liability. Any customer who felt wronged could sue the individual developer who wrote that code.
These lawsuits would then be decided by a jury of people who know nothing about software development. One of the biggest deciding factors in that case would be who could hire the best lawyers and which lawyers could bring in the best "software experts" to explain why the developer did or did not make a mistake. Even if it was ruled that the developer did not make a mistake, they would be unlikely to ever be able to recoup their legal costs. Meanwhile the payouts from the cases in the customer's favor are so large, people are now incentivized to sue over a much wider range of possible mistakes.
These developers just need to accept that these lawsuits and the wasted time and stress that results from them is simply a part of their profession. Regardless of a developers skill, a majority of developers now won't be able to make it through a career without being sued at least once. Eventually the software developers turn to insurance which costs tens of thousands of dollars per year to protect them against these risks.
Would you think this is a fair system? Could you see that system having a negative effect on the software industry? Do you think this would push people out of the industry who might otherwise be great developers? Would this system, that is ostensibly designed to protect customers, actually result in a better level of service?
We already live in this world, it’s just that most software had zero impact on the wellbeing of individuals and/or its mostly licensed as-is.
Software with actual guarantees behind it tends to be very expensive. Their users have tort recourse.
Also major software companies get sued and settle on a fairy regular basis.
I agree with the "most" designation, but there is still plenty of software that does have a direct impact.
>or its mostly licensed as-is.
Which is exactly my point. Most software comes with an agreement that limits the liability for the company or person who created or sold the software. Developers are able to hand waive away that legal liability in ways that other professions, specifically in the industry, are not able to.
>Software with actual guarantees behind it tends to be very expensive. Their users have tort recourse.
But that is dictated by the contract which sets standard that is above the legal bare minimum. The legal minimum is much higher for doctors.
>Also major software companies get sued and settle on a fairy regular basis.
I will admit my analogy isn't perfect because of the relatively high number of private practice doctors compared with the relatively lower number of smaller ISV developers. Doctors as a whole have a much higher exposure than software developers as a whole. That is why I noted that contracts might change if software malpractice cases really became a thing.
My grandmother was born in 1888. In her lifetime, she saw the first automobile, the first airplane (propeller-driven, followed by jet aircraft!), radio, "talkies" (movies with soundtracks), television (black & white, then colour!), stereo records, indoor plumbing and electrical service, electronic computers, rockets, artificial satellites, the moon landing, refrigeration(!), vaccinations and antibiotics(!), the internet, and on and on.
She lived through two world wars, and the aftermath, losing brothers and friends as a result. There were joys and horrors to be sure. She remembered seeing the first car (which she called "a noisy piece of junk"), and the first time she spotted an airplane, and her first electric appliances (refrigerator and clothes washer).
For a thousand years prior, life had changed but only incrementally -- someone from the year 900 could still recognize life in 1400. However, in this short 100 year span during her lifetime, from 1890 to 1990, the transformation of civilization was so thorough and amazing that it is difficult to appreciate civilization's quantum jump.
What a profound change! Just stop and imagine this for a moment: a world without automobiles, where all travel is by horse/carriage, or train, or boat, or foot. No antibiotics. The milkman delivered (unpasteurized milk to the front porch) and the ice man delivered a block of ice every few days. There was no telephone -- a telegraph was the "text message" of the day and the radio was as close to instant information as one could get. There was no telephone. Photographic news could take weeks/months to travel across a country or an ocean, and the only way to cross the oceans was a boat with cloth sales or a steam boiler and a commitment of months.
So to think of the transition from a time where a little scratch could lead to an infection that kills you, or an injury to a limb means chopping it off and hoping one lives, a scientific (lack of) understanding illuminated only briefly by Phineas Gage's tamper-rod-through-the-frontal-lobe injury to a time where surgeons can cut abnormal things out of your brain and you go home in a couple days functioning normally is just astounding.
We live in a time of miracles. There is no other way to say it.
Where?
Before the last century, the majority of humans supported themselves by farming, and farming didn't change that much until the advent of engines.
But then I remember it's only happening because someone's in severe trouble in the first place so it's like "humanity is awesome...oh something not good is happening"
Thank you 'PuffinBlue and 'goodells for bringing this observation up. The civilization our predecessors built and to which we have privilege of contributing is, for all its failings, truly miraculous.
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The mobile CT scanner is also not super helpful for much other than determining whether a potential stroke patient has a grossly hemorrhagic stroke. In that one case, it is beneficial, but I don't think mobile CT scanners are used for much else.
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/17242-mobil...
And there's parts of the world where this is simply not a thing. We take it for granted.
And when you arrive at the hospital it gets really cool - at a level 1 trauma center, they should be prepared to give you a CT scan and treat you in 10 minutes or less. That might involve snaking a tiny wire through your arteries all the way from your leg to your head, or administering one of thousands of drugs that has exactly the desired effect.
It's easy to take it all for granted but the technology and systems in place to take care of us are amazing.