ModelRepublic.org is run by Tyler Johnson and funded by Dustin Moskovitz.
A16z funds small tech. This includes companies that do Crypto and AI. You may not like it, but these are products and services that consumers want to use.
Attacking the authors isn't useful. Are they incorrect in their reporting? Does a16z not knowingly fund any of these immoral companies? Are any of the quotes from senior leadership exceptionally cherrypicked or outright faked?
> You may not like it, but these are products and services that consumers want to use.
The human brain's reward machinery is not and should not be the arbiter of what a healthy society allows to be advertised and sold. Truth becomes a liability when your competitors can deceive without consequence. We are sacrificing societal values for economic value and destroying the fabric of trust that a healthy society foundationally requires in the process. This article is a list of degeneracy bred by mindless and ideological deference to the flavor of unbridled capitalism sold to us by those who stand to benefit from it most.
Unbridled capitalism undoes itself, and those responsible for the undoing are the sole victors. Maybe then those cheering from the sidelines will come to the realization - moot, at that point - that the machiavellian ends were never for us, only the means.
That's a very weird framework and dichotomy you have there. Try untangling yourself out of it by considering some empirical facts, for example, hospitals acquired by private equity often have worse outcomes.
> private equity acquisition was associated with a 25.4% increase in hospital-acquired conditions, which was driven by falls and central line–associated bloodstream infections
> Medicare beneficiaries in the emergency departments of private equity hospitals experienced seven additional deaths per 10,000 visits after acquisition relative to hospitals that were not acquired by private equity, the team found. This rise represented a 13 percent increase from a baseline of 52 deaths per 10,000 visits
This is certainly true to an extent, but it ignores some big problems with fee for service. The biggest one is that incentives between patients and providers are not aligned, which means more than 10% of healthcare provided in the US is wasteful stuff the provider knows is unnecessary but prescribes anyway because it makes them money. There are real opportunities to save money without making outcomes worse, in fact, if we stop doing useless stuff that leaves more time to treat people with real issues.
What's the point of "state of the art healthcare" if it's only for rich people? If Jeff Bezos and I get the exact same health issue - say, some form of cancer, we're going to have radically different treatments and mostly likely outcomes. His will be "state of the art", mine will (hopefully) be good, but definitely not be like his.
Malcolm Gladwell is a massive charlatan and hack. Seeing tech bros use him to discuss healthcare policy (Malcom Gladwell is neither a health professional, public health expert, nor has he worked in the healthcare industry in any real capacity, nor has he ever discussed the plight of workers in the US once during his entire career) feels on point for out of touch our industry is.
Isn't have a cell phone that does not work on a cellular network kind of like having a watch that does not tell time?