With 'Obamacare' Kicking In, Microsoft Sees a Health-Data Windfall 201
curtwoodward writes "Now that President Obama's federal health care reform is past its major political hurdles — and with renewed focus on out-of-control costs in healthcare — companies that sell 'big data' software are licking their chops. The reason: Healthcare has huge piles of information that is being used in new ways, to track patient admissions, spending, and much more. From hospitals to insurance companies, they'll all need new ways of crunching those numbers. It's basically an entirely new field that will dwarf the spending growth in traditional data-heavy industries like finance, retail and marketing, a Microsoft regional sales GM says."
"Big Data" (Score:3, Insightful)
Confusing (Score:1, Insightful)
1) feel ill
2) go to doctor
3) get better
What does an insurance company have to do with it?
Re:"Big Data" (Score:2, Insightful)
Is the absolute worst fucking buzzword out there right now. It is a great way to figure out someone is a complete idiot right off the bat.
I usually employ the standard of whether somebody is capable of making a point without resorting to profanity.
Re:Confusing (Score:3, Insightful)
4) Pay for step 2
Same gov't gives us the TSA and summary execution (Score:5, Insightful)
Rail against the out-of-control government that gives us the TSA, the Patriot Act, and summarily executes US citizens.
Then cheer it on when it takes over 1/6 of the US economy?
And you claim to care about your rights and freedoms?
WHY THE FUCK DO YOU WANT TO GIVE THAT OVERWEENING GOVERNMENT THAT MUCH *MORE* POWER?!?!?!
Re:"Big Data" (Score:0, Insightful)
USA medical spend 15% of GDP, Europe 8-10% (Score:5, Insightful)
US system is FUBAR, 50million uninsured, huge numbers of medical induced bankruptcies (for the heinous crime of being unlucky), lower life expectancy.
Nationalised single payer with optional extra private coverage is demonstrably cheaper and has (on average) better outcomes. Anyone with half a brain would get behind establishing it in the US. Oh and while you are at it do something about malpractice tort reform - the major cause of excessive medical costs.
Re:Confusing (Score:2, Insightful)
4) Pay for step 2
That's why I pay taxes. Same as providing roads, picking up trash, looking after aircraft in flight, providing education, etc.
Re:Same gov't gives us the TSA and summary executi (Score:5, Insightful)
Rail against the out-of-control government that gives us the TSA, the Patriot Act, and summarily executes US citizens.
Then cheer it on when it takes over 1/6 of the US economy?
And you claim to care about your rights and freedoms?
WHY THE FUCK DO YOU WANT TO GIVE THAT OVERWEENING GOVERNMENT THAT MUCH *MORE* POWER?!?!?!
UK Economy: $2.4 trillion
UK Heath expenditure: under $200 billion.
That's 1/12th of the economy, sounds like you overspend on your health system. Shouldn't the competition keep prices down?
Re:Confusing (Score:5, Insightful)
There are lots of other government transfer programs that tax the young to pay for the old. It only "works" until the demographic shift inherent to an aging population gets bad enough that there aren't enough young people paying taxes to support the old people. Then you either move the age to qualify for benefits up or you run up massive deficits.
Re:"Big Data" (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm biased, as my entire job is building those systems so many people refer to as "big data" - but the marketing is terrible. The technology itself is quite good, and makes a huge amount of sense. The problem is, companies traditionally used to doing data stuff for large corporations (ie, EMC, Oracle) are pissing themselves. This destroys their entire business model - so they're flooding the market with crap trying to avoid losing absolute boatloads of money and accounts to these technologies.
Talk about big data with those companies all you like, and they won't mention the actual reason hadoop and the like are a big deal:
1- It's all open source. Don't wanna pay? Self support.
2- It's all designed to run on the cheapest commodity hardware you can find. Why buy appliances with huge markups?
This has companies used to huge margins on appliances and software shitting themselves. They tried FUD with single point of failure stuff, and now that that's solved, they're stuffing infiniband into custom rack designs and saying how much better it is. Meanwhile you can buy 4x the gear for that same price.
Is it a buzzword? Yup. Is it saturated with marketing? Yup. Is it a stupid idea? Hell no.
No. (Score:4, Insightful)
Is the absolute worst fucking buzzword out there right now
The worst buzzword out there is, without a doubt, "Obamacare". This clusterfuck of an industry bailout bill has pretty well no resemblance to health care reform, or to any of what Obama actually wanted to do.
It is a great way to figure out someone is a complete idiot right off the bat.
br? That is also true about people who use the word "Obamacare".
Re:Big healthcare data? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No. (Score:4, Insightful)
Obama certainly didn't want to do single-payer, nationalized health-care, a "robust public option," (whatever the Hell that means, since if it was any good the for profit healthcare system would cease to be in an number of years, so they might as well go to single-payer) or any of those things. Obama is a neoliberal, he'd never propose anything that wasn't a cash grab for someone (the Republicans are also neoliberals, but they have that Southern Strategy gunking them up that means they can't be as fleet of foot as a neoliberal Democrat like Obama). His healthcare plan was basically written by the Heritage Foundation, not generally known as a bastion of socialism.
Basically, in countries that are sensible, they understand that healthcare ought to be like fire and police departments. (Whereas in neoliberal Hells like the United States, they'd like to make the police and fire departments more like our wonderful healthcare system. They're already doing it to the post office and the school. And it's bipartisan.)
It's not capitalism, it's Thatcherism (oh, and you know what country has suffered under the yoke of Thatcherism for year? I'll give you a hint, she was Prime Minister of the UK.). There Is No Alternative. (I'm looking forward to our coming Greek style healthcare, myself, though in many ways we already have it.)
Re:No. (Score:1, Insightful)
Obamacare? Clusterfuck?
You mean the bill that means that I'll actually be able to buy insurance in the future? The state by state approach wasn't working because healthcare is an interstate commerce issue. People move from state to state and take their medical issues with them. I'm living in WA and it was one of the only states to guarantee health insurance to anybody that could pay for it. Which meant that they had to flunk 10% into the high risk pool no matter how healthy they were. Which meant that I'd be paying $500 or $600 a month because I was flagged as high risk.
And no health care reform? What do you call mandatory coverage for preventative care and capping the administrative fees? Or, what do you call the pay for quality changes that are coming? Sure, it wasn't what it should be, but without being able to go back to the '70s and take Nixon's proposal, it was the best we could do.
Plus, Obama should be proud of getting something done. I used to oppose the term Obamacare, but honestly, at this point, he should at least get credit for it, he's taking the heat regardless.
Re:You've missed the official narrative (Score:4, Insightful)
What you are saying happens on both sides, but disagreeing with the effectiveness of a single payer health care system is about as pants-on-head retarded as it gets. There is so much proof for its greater effectiveness WITH lesser costs that arguing against it is... frankly clinging to an ideology thats been totally disproven in multiple countries by multiple different types of government, presiding over multiple different cultures.
All it boils down to is "We can't do that becuz thats the cumminists. If we do that they win!"
Additionally conservative media in the U.S. can't even back up its crazy lines anymore without generating extremely biased(or in some cases completely fabricated) studies. Its gone beyond the point of retardation to the point where it seems like the conservative movement in the U.S. is actually trying to do as much DAMAGE as possible to the U.S.
Reality check: Cold war is over. Both sides lost. Get over it. Merits to be found in both forms of government. Take the best of both sides and be happier.
Re:You've missed the official narrative (Score:5, Insightful)
Hopefully at some point our country peacefully separates into two (or more) new countries so that the sensible and logical people can have single payer health care and the others can yell at each other about pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps.
You can always move to Canada or England if you think they are so much better
That is a very common statement, but why do I need to leave? Why can't I help change the system and then other people can leave? Why are you the one who deserves to stay?
On top of that, the people who say things like "why don't you just go leave and live in Canada or the UK" often have no idea how difficult it is to do that. I am a highly qualified worker but I need a job offer in one of those countries in order to move there - I can't just show up and declare myself to be living there. Conversely, the conservative free-market havens like Somalia and Afghanistan tend to require almost nothing in order to live there, so why don't you leave instead?
It always amazes me that liberals complain that conservatives want to run their life
Well considering how the conservatives in government are constantly impeding on my ability to live my life, I would say they are indeed telling me how to run my life.
it is the liberals who are demanding that everyone follows their rules
Single payer health care does not demand you follow any new rules. If every other industrialized country in the world is any example, it would actually result in you keeping more of your earned income than what you currently keep - and it will still allow you to die from preventable ailments if you choose to do so.
And when you don't agree with the liberal it goes right to name calling.
Considering they way you are already throwing around unsubstantiated assumptions I would say you have already gone to name calling.
Re:Same gov't gives us the TSA and summary executi (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit.
They only appear diametrically opposed if you're a moron. The reality is that people will be forced to pay into the system if they have the money rather than waiting until they get sick to get insurance so they'll at least be contributing something rather than being overwhelmed by bills and declaring bankruptcy. What's more, we're already starting to see checks mailed out to people whose health insurer charged too much for premiums. My insurer was pretty good at estimating the real costs so my check was pretty small. But for other people the checks were a lot larger.
Obamacare also mandates that insurance companies pay for preventative care, you know the care that prevents serious and expensive conditions from occurring or at least reduces the likelihood of such conditions occurring. The US pays a crap load of money for preventable diseases to people who haven't been able to afford coverage and have to wait until they have a serious illness before seeking help or worry about whether or not their trip to the hospital for a possible heart attack is going to be covered.
As far as the historical, that's not the government that's because morons like you vote for corporatists with no interest in keeping costs down if it means corporate interests and the rich suffer. Every other country that's gone with universal healthcare has lower costs than we do, if we screw that up, you can blame the GOP for corporate welfare.
Re:"Big Data" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Confusing (Score:4, Insightful)