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A comment on A Billionaire Pledges to Fight High Drug Prices, and the Industry Is Rattled. Parent comment

Re:A Billionaire Pledges to Fight High Drug Prices, and the ... by stickfigure on Sunday October 21, 2018 @07:58PM (#18271116)
Doctors, like auto mechanics, repeat the same tasks over and over and have a pretty good idea what something will cost. Like with automobiles, there are sometimes surprises, and those can require a new estimate to be signed off on.

Software development is inherently nonrepetitive and therefore unpredictable.

Healthcare is much closer to auto repair than software development.

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Re:A Billionaire Pledges to Fight High Drug Prices, and the ... by mentalhealth on Sunday October 21, 2018 @08:54PM (#18271354)
Healthcare is much closer to auto repair than software development.

Sure, on a car that's running that you can't turn off, with parts you can't replace, a maintenance history you can't see, and an ECU that actively misrepresents what's going on.

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Re:A Billionaire Pledges to Fight High Drug Prices, and the ... by vvanders on Sunday October 21, 2018 @09:37PM (#18271520)
Hey now that sounds a lot like our '81 Vanagon!
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Re:A Billionaire Pledges to Fight High Drug Prices, and the ... by ako on Monday October 22, 2018 @02:46AM (#18272651)
Haha, if anything, software should be the most predictable. Most software just provides some screens to enter and view data. How difficult can it be to predict that? I would rate healthcare much more difficult to predict.
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Re:A Billionaire Pledges to Fight High Drug Prices, and the ... by stickfigure on Monday October 22, 2018 @01:04PM (#18276342)
Most software just provides some screens to enter and view data.

That is a dangerously naive view of software. Even apps that look like simple CRUD end up riddled with specialized business logic. Apps which truly are a few screens of simple CRUD end up as spreadsheets or Microsoft Access. We've gotten pretty good at not reinventing wheels.

Say what you will about the challenge of it, doctoring is fundamentally procedural and repetitive. Patients don't really show up with whole new undiscovered diseases anymore.

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Re:A Billionaire Pledges to Fight High Drug Prices, and the ... by conanbatt on Sunday October 21, 2018 @08:48PM (#18271317)
> Healthcare is much closer to auto repair than software development.

O'boy. What doctor do you go to?

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