Bitcoin Forum

What (if any) uses/benefits can the Bitcoin currency offer to improve both the care people receive and reduce the overall cost?  Seems like every country has a unique approach to healthcare and I am wondering if the unified currency model can benefit the adaptation to and improvement of healthcare in a variety of countries.  Anything is fair game here, just looking for ideas or input. 

Everyone needs some kind of healthcare and everyone needs some kind of currency.  Why not combine two universal needs to make both stronger for all people? 

Ideas/Discussion - GO :)

I'm a doctor. I can't think of a way Bitcoin can help (other than auto-taxing all transactions to fund health care stuff...but that would be a regulatory option overlaid on Bitcoin, not really Bitcoin itself)

When people stop having to pay fees at every turn perhaps they can pay for decent health care?

I am not a doctor, but if you want to help on the long term, as in 2140 like long term invest your bitcoin in tech. The next big thing could be Quantum Biology. http://worldsciencefestival.com/webcasts/quantum_biology

Sure I would love to cure cancer now.  But like nuclear fusion quantum biology could be the answer for a lots of ills, on the long term. Right now the model is to target a group of people with a prescription. If you belong to the group of people with an allergy, you are out of luck with that medication.

Bitcoin is about being your own bank. Why not have a healthcare system based on a very individual model, unique to you and no one else. No more side effects as the prescription would be developed for one unique patient, and not a group of patients. No more waste with 1000s of pills unused because of your pharmacy with more and more refills. No more healthcare black hole. The deficit would be greatly reduced.

Human genome + quantum biology = the future of healthcare bitcoin?

Everything we do now is obsolete. We need to think big, out of the box big for the next 50 years and help those big brains with our bitcoins, and not government beggers like GE with exclusive contracts on healthcare.

well people with certain 'medical' issues already do spend their bitcoins on 'medicine'

the punchline:
.. SR sells their 'medicine'

i think getting the medical industry to take on bitcoin is a long term option in many decades. The more important goal for today, is food and utilities.

Appreciate all the input - I am working in IT for a major health care company and we have a division that does really long term IT projects that I hope to get into soon.  My work now is a mix of support and projects and I really enjoy the research and projects aspect.  There are likely going to be opportunities to invest in technology to improve care for the member and reducing boundaries/cost to that care is part of our mission. 

Thanks

If BTC became widely accepted (big if), the cost of the hospital services could be tracked on the blockchain.  This would in theory allow consumers to easily compare prices paid (consumers not using health insurance).  This could in theory force hospitals to charge non-insurance customers the same rate as insurance customers. 

1)   Buy an ASIC, start mining, find companies that build equipment that you can use for medical research that accept bitcoins, build your own supercomputer with GPUs, Do research with that supercomputer for your patients, find ways to network that supercomputer so it accelerates any type of imaging you do in your hospital(fmri,CAT, etc), build a network tell other hospitals about what you are doing, charge for access to your supercomputer to networked hospitals, let other hospitals adopt your idea so that worldwide health is improved ASAP. Build a giant networked supercomputer on the p2p standard for a massive parallel supercomputer hospital network, invest in solar energy to keep energy costs down.

2)   Buy more ASICs for bitcoin mining, Buy FPGAs like the Vertex 7 to have programmable chips that can do any specialized work you need, start using the Hospital supercomputer network to design the next generation of HealthCare oriented ASICs using what you learn from the FPGAs sell your chips to other hospitals, make your chips open source to maximize innovation, savings, and allow other hospitals to be able to charge for their own design.

Being able to have your innovation opensource and allowing others to be able to make a living off that innovation creates a 1000 fold acceleration in world wide adoption, design innovation, eventual money saving return as other healthcare techs find improvements in efficiency and features.

apply for a creative commons licence with the ability to charge for the design, this way if they want to innovate they better have a revolutionary design if they want to get out of the creative commons licence.

30 years from now, if this is followed it will be the end of disease as we know them, we will just have to worry about man made pathogens; with the kind of power the singularity that Ray Kurzweil has spoken of will bring, i'm sure someone will figure out how to turn someone into jelly without killing them sooner or later, we'll need a cure for that.

3) pay people in bitcoins to use their GPUs to do medical research for the Hospital network, create new drugs, the infrastructure that can be created is thousands of times greater than anything the pharmaceutical companies can afford... trust me there are a lot of people that cannot keep up with Bitcoins Encryption system, they are forced to upgrade to keep up we'll need those nvidia Cuda ready cards and those inefficienct GPUs to create the next generation of medical breakthroughs.

A Radeon 4870 is not very efficient per watt compared to a Radeon 7970, every generation doubles performance per watt so if you keep a flat rate based on the minimum acceptable Cuda or OpenCL card you'll make sure to get these people using their computer to help research, only pay in bitcoins that way you don't have to worry about fluctuations in USD price, it's a flatrate fee per work unit returned.

4) Sell your old units to people that want them in the third world, lots of tech savvy youngsters who would be willing to pay for outdated GPUs, ASICs and FPGA miners where their exchange rate and cost of living is quite reduced when compared to the developing world; This will expand the health care networks computing power gradually, no processing cycle can go to waste.

5) Die happy 1000 years from now knowing you started the Health Care revolution that granted you that long life.

Bitcoin can contribute to a decentralized healthcare plan. People who need insurance simply pay a fee to a decentralized Bitcoin escrow network for their healthcare. Certified professionals (docters) hold a private key to tap into that escrow fund. If 6 peers (3 patients, 3 doctors) approve the need for healthcare payments, the patient receives the cash, which he can use to pay the doctor.

Advantages of a P2P healthcare system:

1. Everybody can sign up - no background checks, no denial of insurance (democrats love this);
2. Everybody can decide their own monthly fee;
3. Anyone who has paid into the pool can get healthcare;
4. System maintenance cost is much lower than commercial healthcare (you get more healthcare for your $);
5. The government cannot force you to participate (republicans love this);
6. The network/protocol can automatically identify abusers and lock them out permanently;
7. people can organize different pools. For example, republican billionaires don't have to be in the same pool as the 99% - everybody is free to organise their own pool.

This satisfies both 'democrat' and 'republican' needs. In fact, any group of people could organise their own healtcare pool. The 99% could have their own pool and the 1% could have their own pool. Who cares?

Sure, we need to put in the security checks to minimize abuse. Sure, there will be "elite healthcare pools" and "pools for the poor". I think this is inevitable. Nevertheless, people will receive more healthcare than traditionally. And that's the point.

Years ago I had this idea of a 'P2P healthcare' system. Bitcoin got me thinking about it again...

I will say this again and again: it is amazing how the bitcoin concept opens people's mind for thinking out of the box, beyond political agendas. I am sure i am fighting one you guys/gals on another website because we would have nothing in common, but here it's almost like an oasis (that is, if your stay away from the bitcointalk political section hahaha!)

+1 Citizen

Could we make this system to work on a blockchain? lets say someone needs medical attention, but they only have x amount of dollars, so they sign up for a doctor that they can afford in their area, someone helps them out and they have enough money to get off the waiting list at said doctor to go to a more expensive doctor that can see them immediately, taking them off the lower rate doctors list. 

I'm thinking about efficiency, distributing the patients as needed,

Your idea is excellent, it follows the Chinese Doctor model you pay the doctors to keep you healthy, but you have to be aware of law limits with this method, a doctor has to signup for a insurance provider licence to get this working... can this be facilitated if the doctors work as a group?

Awesome ideas and discussion!  Making notes, opening my mind and enjoying the ideas of the future. 

Use SilkRoad for cheaper copy medicin = afford life saving medicin you otherwise could not.

Perhaps Bitcoin can be used for black market medicine.

Like doctors treating patients for money.

Bitcoin could be used to crowdfund medical research and development. A site where people propose projects and ideas and post project updates and the world rewards them with microdonations would leapfrog traditional medical research.

Hey OP

If you need help we are willing to help. programming, research, networking, legal, etc, anything you need, I bet you we can pull this off the ground with every single idea we have.

CrowdSource, CrowdFund, p2p research, encryption system to keep patient data safe, etc.

if we consider that every contribution given in any area required 10,000 - 20,000 hours from a master, 5000 or less from average people, that means $150,000.00 dollars worth of knowledge from every single person involved.

The manhattan project cost 20 billion dollars so the contribution of  130,000 people overtime would make this a worldwide success story, just gotta make sure those people are motivated to earn a living.

well have BTC-BTC signs in their eyes. There is no lack of Financiers, just lack of people.

Thanks for the ideas all - at this point I am mostly in the gathering information and ideas phase to see what others think is possible and beneficial. 

You could do this in fiat too...I still see fraud as a big issue.  Doctors are not immune to committing fraud.  In fact, fraudulent self-referred medical imaging is a major problem in health care (it's technically not a violation of the laws the prohibit self-referral if the imaging equipment is "regular in-office equipment"...such as an urinalysis test strip machine...but, some doctors claim MRI's and PET scanners are not sophisticated pieces of equipment but just routine office stuff; anyhow, medicare bought it hook line and sinker).

Fraud is one of the biggest areas of concern within healthcare.  If we could find ways to reduce fraud, healthcare would be a lot cheaper and more people could have access to it.  I like the idea of using transaction logs within the blockchain as a way to verify financial aspects of the exchange.  Maybe there could exist a health record blockchain/"coin" that all parties have access to.  Since the unique identifiers are anonymous there wouldn't be any risk of HIPAA violations.  The same way that transactions are "confirmed" we could do something similar for confirming treatments.  Keeps the patients and doctors honest about what they charge.  If they only get payed based on confirmed transactions in the log then it would be a whole lot easier to spot fraud this way...

It's a new form of money not a miracle cure for all of society's problems ....  

You would be amazed, I got bored, cleaning my house so I thought up some more ideas on how to implement bitcoins technology for healthcare.

Blockchain as a public ledger of patients in waiting for more efficient distribution of resources. good idea.

Funding future technology, long term and requires capital.

Distributed hard coded virtual healthcare, take out the middleman, excellent idea but quite possible extreme opposition from insurance companies
loved by patients, can't apply x>y= no health insurance... impossible to abuse a hard coded open source system; The health care contract is the overall
available money in the system pegged to a market value according to available positions, it would be in the best interest of hospitals to keep their open spots
down to a minimum by lowering cost to bring by more patients. it can even be used to assign and keep track of patients being monitored by Doctors and Nurses
If they get over a set amount of patients their wages go up, slowing down the amount of patients coming their way, The best Doctors with the highest demand
get the better wages according to their track record recorded on the blockchain... healthy patients equal more money for them, more difficult higher cost
procedures gravitate more doctors to fill the gap... it's a market based approach that keeps track of what is going on in the system at all times. Good for Doctors,Nurses and Patients.

Encrypted collaborative healthcare, patient comes in with encrypted key for his files, Doctor gets immediate access to all data stored by previous doctors visited by patient.
If research is needed special health care miners, specialized ASIC machinery made to wade through the data, go through all databases x'ing out all encrypted patient details
and applying statistical analysis over all patient data in all connected hospitals on request by authorized healthcare researchers.

Using Bitcoin... buy an ASIC, the Bitcoin lottery is subsidizing the growth of the network till the transaction fees vs reward for the lottery becomes insanely difficult to justify.
Think of it as Trickle up economics, Bernacky is printing out the cash at the top and Bitcoin is distributing the cash at the bottom... till the fees become more lucrative.

start Bitcoin fundraisers... if people convert their cash to bitcoins, and you only use them when the price is high, then you win, over all, the wins and losses are negligible for
a non-profit organization, it's like gaining x amount of dollars above what was donated... if always spent at it's peak.

start your own HealthCoins, copy bitcoins system exactly and pay people for doing research on your behalf :), have people exchange HealthCoins for Bitcoins when they need to
opt in to the HealthCoin blockchain for medical insurance. The Research miners get paid in HealthCoins early adopters begin distributing the HealthCoins as a reward for helping
you find new cures or help out existing patients, use the altruism of early adopters to help spur the movement, knowing that they are paying for their insurance.

and you must not forget that Bitcoin is not just a money transfer program, or a currency, it is a stock option all in one! The more volume of transactions per day the higher the price goes.
Same for HealthCoin, the more people opt in to the program the more valuable each HealthCoin becomes, giving the same benefits as Bitcoin, people are incentivised to stay with your plan
because the longer they stay the more valuable your Coin becomes, the more incentivized your organization becomes to do a great job.

Bitcoins system is perfect for this type of shift, if people are doing a good job in their organization you'll get a market based appreciation in your wages asap, people will vote with their cash.

The cost of healthcare and it's insurance is important. it's also the issue that goes across all borders.

However another good issue to consider is using the blockchain to  query anonymous real time health records.
another post mentioned using a hardware (private) key to access these records, which would be good.

I think using anonymous health data in the block chain to spot large trends in a community can be even bigger.
Imagine:

                         Watching a community health problem trend in real time and making preventive changes to limit the problem.

                         What about using the Big Data concept for sub communities to decide where to place health services.

                         Even anonymous Genealogy/ health records of large extended families in medium sized towns, cities  could be good.
                         One would simply assign a tag that represents a family name in that town, city and small country.

                         Health reward through bitcoins to highlight and support communities that are doing it right can also be used.

                         Taking a census every decade not the answer.
                         its about catching the problems before or as it happens to make a change.



The blockchain can give us that stream of data that is needed. 




                       

Thanks again everyone for their comments/suggestions.  I will be recording the ideas and compiling some type of presentation to give to our next generation projects group to see what kind of investment we can make in positive changes :)

Probably will be a few more weeks before I present, so plenty of time for additional comments/ideas.

Thanks!

I think the ability to do micro payments could help.
I'm not sure what is coming in the future for medicine, I'm sure many of the things mentioned in this thread are on the way, and sooner than we would expect. 
At the moment though I believe the most undervalued medicine is preventive.  There are cultures that have explored this aspect for thousands of years, finding ways to make the practitioner more resilient to stress and disease.
Not only will micro payments be helpful to find the proper fit for a teacher or method. (from DIY to one on one classes)  Doctors, specialists, nurse practitioners could also do short online interviews.  This could be helpful to find the right person, and allow people who want more control over their services to not feel like they are restricted by an insurance company or whatever random recommendations they are able to get. 
Of course in this situation a micro payment might be .2 - .05 BTC but in comparison to the normal overhead you have to pay for just by walking in a door this is nothing.

Better Insurance. (https://ripple.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2382)

The long term goal is to use bitcoin to make healthcare self sufficient and free to the world.  I am currently working on a paper that will explain the structure.  Basically, to start, everyone who joins the bit care health network will receive miners. Those miners send the bitcoins back to the health network becoming the biggest mining operation in the world.  Because it will be a huge amount, Bitcoin itself will be the pool, and monitor the blockchain for fairness (individuals will also have this ability).  The bitcoin itself will be invested (either into real currency or stay digital.  It will also be used to exchange payments to doctors in their local currency.  Profits will be invested into multiple industries around the world in order to sustain the system regardless of if bitcoins can be mined or not (necessary consumption goods), such is the case that will happen in the year 2146.  Eventually the products you buy such as salt or cars, because of investments will return portions of that to the bit care health network, (you go to the store and buy lets say bitbread to make a sandwich).  Because of new "bit" industries which arise to make goods for healthcare it also creates jobs while at the same time decentralizing insurance and healthcare. Eventually healthcare and insurance becomes a single payer peer to peer system facilitated by bitcoin (cryptocurrency) with healthcare paid for by consumption only, (which is sustainable as everyone consumes).  Then, everyone around the world can visit any doctor in the world that is a member of the bitcare network for free.  All they will have to do is continue to buy the same things they always buy, but their healthcare will actually own all or portions of that.  The bitcoin is an excellent way to initiate this exchange.  This system will remove governmental controls/nationalized healthcare, and base it on free enterprise. While at the same time the bitcoin can be used in the single payer system to pay doctors and hospitals in their local currencies. I hope I explained that well enough.  It will take me a little while to finish the paper itself.  This is just the starting basics: www.bitcarehealthnetwork.org ;D

For what it's worth I am a doctor.
The other day I was considering how open source has created complex computing and financial structures that we might have previously thought needed big business.

Perhaps there is some way a blockchain reward based system could be used to crowdfund future medical research. Not sure how yet though.

Block chains could be used for mutual assistance savings schemes where members would vote on treatments covered in an efficient, representative way without having to reveal the identity of the individuals and their illnesses to others int the group.

MediCoin?

... redeemable for private health care.

Something along those lines yep - I need to revisit my write up on this and see about submitting it for review.

Charlie Lee alluded to using the blockchain to solve complex DNA sequencing to learn the roots of illnesses among other things. He talked about it being something an alt currency blockchain could accomplish, but I see it being more a layer on the original bitcoin protocol. Maybe the bitcoin 3.0 movement, where we are using the hundreds of millions of transactions going on every day to solve these complex problems in our bodies and environment.

Who needs Obamacare when you have Bitcare?

There is this place: https://www.microryza.com/ "FUND SCIENCE YOU BELIEVE IN"

We could just get them to accept BTC. Done! :)

At least in the U.S., one of the primary problems with healthcare is the lack of a real market for the products and services. Since the tax code provides that health insurance premiums are considered pre-tax, most people have their insurance through their employers. Thus most purchasers of insurance don't directly know the premium being paid and evaluate it against the benefits received.

The apparent cost of bottom dollar coverage, like only paying $20 for your $100 primary care visit, is reduced, and so people pay to insure things that wouldn't normally be insured. They also don't tend to know the true cost of the visit, the lab tests that are ordered, the medicines, etc. In such a market, of course the price of everything goes up and up.

The question I am puzzling over is, how could bitcoin break that cycle and put price incentives back?

It would probably need to start outside of the USA first and then after proving successful we could work it in here.  Other issues with USA is the HIPAA and the legal requirement for information to be private.  Some type of blockchain record of my frequent Dr visits are off putting to some/many right now.  Many other countries don't have the same laws or hangups about that stuff, so it would be easier to start somewhere else.  This could have amazing potential in countries where there is little or no healthcare.  There is a surprising amount of people who have smartphones in relatively undeveloped parts of the world. 

This idea is kind of like a snowball effect - once it takes hold somewhere, it will take off :) 

A blockchain wouldn't always have to be so apparent, it could be cryptographically protected like in Bitmessage; No one but the people who know the code can see the data.

The blockchain part of Bitcoin could simply be a synchronized back-end for a Hospitals network, every time a nurse admits a patient, they send a update that updates all copies of the ledger, this way wherever they go afterward a doctor can have a patients complete record with contact information from all previous doctor assesments. The ledger could be made tamper proof or encrypted so only authorized people can view that information.

A lot of different information can be put on a synchronized database, patient plans, insurance, pre-payment information and for qualified providers global coverage, synchronized so wherever you go, you can be sure you'll be taken care of properly without anyone following you around, you may even choose to pay for a procedure lay-away style, synchronized so any participating Doctor can help you and redeem the money, through blockchain escrow.

for other situations it could be partly encrypted so that contact information for your insurance provider  can be seen by non-participating Health regions, or basic health information in case of emergency, like a medical tattoo but better.

I mean what can't you do, when you have a group of institutions sharing a synchronized ledger with all relevant data?

just imagine if there was a open DNA project where you could upload your entire DNA profile for researchers to analyze? any project that wanted to move forward in Human DNA research could whenever they needed the data they can have it,  in fact any research project can make all their data sets immediately available to anyone with a synchronized ledger, as soon as someone makes a new entry, everyone within the network knows... this truly is an amazing concensus building technology. It could improve collaborative research projects, by adding hierarchies and structure to the Blockchain.

adapt this p2p model with BitTorrent and you have a downloadable synchronized database. I was even thinking it could use magnet links as well, simply by grabbing the patients hash code, all relevant research viewed by the doctors could be tagged as they view it, done automatically by ledger updating software to the same ledger or another for doctor reference.

pass a hash of the data every so often into the Bitcoin blockchain or in any other blockchain and you have data security without applying your own proof of work scheme.


Edit: for maximum practicality, what we can do now is what should be implemented, a simple database synchronizing both web, telephone, and in person contact between patients and doctors, a simple backend that any front end interface can update, whether it is a smart phone based booking, or direct doctor to pharmacist/hospital staff co-ordination of services; Basically, a workflow based database, that simply requires that a Front end interface observe the changes in the Blockchain and alert the required staff or medical services... instant synchornization of all staff within a Health Region, that could be very powerful.

Thanks jdb - some good info to add to the discussion.

I live in a small country were small changes, have a enormous affects quickly.

Bitcoin could be used as a currency in a local healthcare rewards program. Each person would earn cryptocurrency/BTC , from their  local insurance company, for quarterly personal health trend improvements in:

           *  weight/ BMI
           *  Blood pressure
           *  Blood sugar
           *  Resting Heart rate
           *   etc..

Tracking of participants  health, could be monitored day to day by phone apps and sensors on monitoring devices.(like smart weight scales.). However result could be certified monthly or quarterly  by a local health clinic doctor/nurse.  Of course this would be a voluntary program.

Cryptocurrency reward, could be redeemed at local businesses, that are in a major industry like tourism.
This will in turn would link people's health improvements to the health of the economy and  create jobs.

If a cryptocurrency other than BTC is used, the receiving business could exchange the current for fiat with
a health Insurance company. The funds could be used from insurance marketing budgets initially. However
lower cost from health improvement would cover it, going forward.

Contrary to the peer to peep nature of the blockchain, this method is very centralized.
However If executed  correctly, it could be a win for everyone. The obvious benefits are:

             * Lower healthcare and healthcare insurance cost
             * Frequent local tourism vacations for participants
             * a secondary market for locals to exchange/sell vacation rewards to foreigners
             * An Increase in tourism Jobs
             * Large improvements in personal and community health

I'm a healthcare fraud analyst and as I am also very familiar with bitcoin by this point, I only see BTC being used to commit more fraud.

We (in America) shouldn't have to pay anything beyond a copay or deductible for health insurance, ala the rest of the industrialized world. Even Israel has a single-payer healthcare system. That should tell you how much we truly love screwing our own people.

Physicians, hospital administrators and big pharma are the new banker class. Just like lawyers have always been, physicians are now far more interested in helping themselves make money than helping out their clients, aka patients.

So what we we have now is a system that encourages and rewards doctors who learn how to abuse the claims reimbursement system and don't give a flying fuck about helping their patients.

I'm not saying all doctors are bad of course. But there are some greedy ones who ruin the system for the rest of us and render America the laughingstock of the developed world when it comes to healthcare.

TLDR: Money shouldn't be an issue in healthcare, but it is. We should know by now that wealthy people will do anything to attain more wealth. In the healthcare industry that often includes killing, mutilating or otherwise screwing up the lives of healthy people.

Try getting bitcoin to change the financial industry first. So far it has yet to move the needle, as global wealth discrepancy continues its march into all-time highs.

Straight up this. I don't understand why some users have a perception fixated upon the idea that Bitcoin will somehow make the world a better place. Bitcoin is basically just the money you have in your wallet and bank account made marginally more efficient and able to avoid adjustments by government (i.e. expanding the money supply).

The only thing I could think of is potentially making it cheaper to transfer funds overseas for overseas health workers. But even then the difference would be minimal at best.

Let's not try to make Bitcoin the next big wonder. People try to imagine BTC into too much fantasy, and in reality they become hopeless with little price drop. So I think Bitcoin should remain as just day to day alternate currency. That will provide both stability and reliability for Bitcoin.

The MAIN problem with Health Care is the prohibitive cost for most people to afford quality care.

If you could implement Bitcoin payment in the whole supply chain, from the development and sourcing of raw material to the payment by the patient, you would see a significant change in the cost.

Multiply the cost saving factor in this whole process, and you WILL see a reduction in cost.

Some doctors give discount for cash or emmediate payments... {They do not have to wait 3 to 4 weeks for medical insurance companies to pay their bills} These discounts could also be awarded to Bitcoin payments for two reasons :

1. The doctor pay less banking fees.
2. The doctor gets almost instant payment for services rendered. { If they waited 4 weeks, they would have lost interest on that money in a bank }

This will benefit both the doctor and the patient.  ;)

Edit : Information could also be recorded in the Blockchain {Treatment history / Payment history for tax purpose} Imagine being able to keep all records of payment and treatment forever, without having to archive it yourselves.  ;)

That is IF you not worried about privacy issues.  ;D

 

Bitcoin is an important part of fixing healthcare.  Bitcoin is an important financial tool that has obvious inherent security and conveniences that fiat or wire transfers do not.

However... there is an absolute requirement, in my opinion, to completely eradicate all health insurance.  Healthcare is already a profit organization.  A for-profit finance organization on top of healthcare only acts to the detriment of healthcare.  Executive pay and bonuses in healthcare insurance is absolutely wrong.

Insurance is important for homes, cars, electronics, etc.. but it has no place in healthcare.  It's proven to be a failed financial model and an impediment to healthcare.

The sooner people stop talking about healthcare insurance as if it's a necessity the sooner healthcare will be solved.  And then... Bitcoin can have even more benefits to healthcare and just about anything else that requires efficient financing.   

So long as we continue pretending there is a relationship between cost and quality of healthcare, the problem will remain in tact. Employee salaries comprise the vast majority of healthcare costs -- not advancements in medicine and technology.

We really should be following the footsteps of the rest of the developed world and implement a single-payer healthcare system. Until then, we are just encouraging physicians to figure out how to work the insurance system rather than to concentrate on delivering quality healthcare.

If we did move to single-payer, I suspect a lot of physicians who are in it solely for the money will be weeded out, and perhaps our life expectancy will catch up to all the other countries we currently make fun of for being too socialist.*


*This includes ISRAEL by the way, to all my Republican conservative friends out there. Yes, that's right. Israel has a single-payer healthcare system. Deal with it.

Glad to see this thread resurrected - I haven't made much progress with this idea in the past year but it has been something I think about frequently.  Utilization of a blockchain for faster payment, accurate billing, and potential storage of medical records (something to make it accessible by all, but private to the individual and that person's providers) would be large improvements.  Certainly in a place like the USA, there would have be larger changes happening to make this effective, but as others mentioned in smaller countries where there is less regulation and red tap the possibilities for integration into crypto technologies could be a huge win. 

well the furfillment of technology money like bitcoin its not the technology it sellf its the capacidty of ideas and bussness that comes by having less nervouse and more active community in bitcoin the inovation ideas and active bussness do a better use of technology even in medical terms

Maybe Bitcoin can help pay for blackmarket doctor, i.e. if you have a shootout in the hood and get wounded, you can't go to regular hospital for treatment since they would call the cops, so you call a blackmarket doctor to treat you and you can pay with Bitcoin.

This way, Bitcoin could help the healthcare in low income hoods for people getting treatment.

I think it is appropriate to discuss Jesus Christ in this discussion about health care.


In regards to the 'high cost' of 'health care':

Jesus Christ miraculously healed people with the Power of Almighty God!

Jesus did not charge any money to do those amazing works for people.

---

Bitcoin is money, or it is 'like money'.

In regards to how to use your money, when you are confronted with a health emergency:

Jesus spoke a parable, that people have named 'The Good Samaritan Parable'


Quoted from: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+10:25-37&version=NIV (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+10:25-37&version=NIV)

Luke 10:25-37New International Version (NIV)
The Parable of the Good Samaritan

25 On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

26 “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

27 He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’(a]; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’(b]”

28 “You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.”

29 But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

30 In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two denarii[c] and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’

36 “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

37 The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”

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Therefore, I say to you, Go And Do Likewise With Your Bitcoins(money)

Now here's some realistic thinking...

If you exclude the speculators (90% of holders), bitcoin is really only used for fraud, gambling and drugs (this is true -- lets stop pretending its not).

So yes, you could use bitcoin as a way to skirt around the PPO or HMO system where 100 people have to get paid before 1 patient can get a surgery.

However, as we've learned over the past 3 years, there has been ZERO adoption of bitcoin among lower-income populations. Want to know why? Because you have to have shit like a bank account, money, the internet and a computer in order to get bitcoin. That's a lot of 1st world shit that we take for granted as spoiled pussies.

I see it more likely being used by Rush Limbaugh- or Michael Jackson-types to get highly experimental penis enlargement surgeries and/or large quantities of sleepy-time meds.

Bitcoin won't ever be used to help poor people. Let's face it: any time a new way to make or use money is involved, the children of rich, white people swoop in, set up regulations and tip that scale also in their favor. Looking at the pictures of the people who comprise the Bitcoin Foundation says it all.

Yeah I think the payment side of healthcare will benefit before the clinical side does. Here's a well written paper on using the blockchain for claims processing. It's written by Humana one of the largest insurers in the US.  https://www.healthit.gov/sites/default/files/3-47-whitepaperblockchainforclaims_v10.pdf