Hacker News Reader

Comment by A_Duck | Hacker News Reader

It's really terrifying that someone less savvy might have spent their life savings paying this bill unnecessarily

As OP says: "I had access to tools that helped me land on that number, but the moral issue is clear"

The direction is clear though; enable healthcare consumers using generative AI to appeal their bills, and scale up. If it breaks insurance companies and healthcare billing departments, well, we could fix this, right? It is a choice not to, healthcare consumers will act accordingly as rational actors in a suboptimal system. Working systems are rarely changed; failing systems at least have the opportunity for change to occur.

https://fighthealthinsurance.com/ was previously posted about a year ago, but I see no traction. There is no moat, just build and distribute, right?

Show HN: Make your health insurance company cry too Fight Health Insurance - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41356832 - August 2024

(broadly speaking, my thesis is generative AI can be weaponized to break down bureaucracy designed to extract from the human, from cost efficiency and power asymmetry perspectives)

It seems like every time consumers automate against the-powers-that-be, the powers change the rules.

- Can’t just cancel credit cards to reset subscriptions/memberships, because new card info now gets forwarded to your vendors.

- Chargebacks are now much less successful, even when the consumer has clearly been wronged.

I think a lot of "let's use technology to solve a social problem" takes forget to assume that both sides have access to technology.

This is not lost on me [1] [2]. I am a technologist (and hacker at heart), but also behind the scenes in politics (outcomes > status). I've commented, quite frequently here, that you cannot fix political and social issues with tech: wrong OSI layer of the stack. But, this change takes time, months, years, sometimes half a decade or more (election cycles, and then policy implementation lag). In the meantime, tactical solutions require technology, and that is what I am proposing in my top subthread comment.

Politics are strategic, long term system improvements. Technology serves for tactical solutions in the near term.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40346506

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28571755

The end of the rip-off economy: consumers use LLMs against information asymmetry - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45748195 - October 2025

I like the idea but I'm sure that's a YC startup working on juicing revenue from patients being spun at the same time.

So build faster and better than YC to defend society|humanity against YC portfolio companies (not all, of course, just the harmful ones) until politics can close the gap. There is no speed limit. There is no moat. The only thing you don't have is ~$500k in investment [1]. Constraint breeds creativity. Be creative, stay curious.

[1] https://www.ycombinator.com/deal

It's very hard to believe that a company setting out to fight against one of the major "legs" of the stool of the US Economy is going to be playing on a level playing field against companies whose mission is to strengthen those legs. Even if the business idea is sound. There's simply too much money and power wrapped up in ensuring healthcare remains a money sponge that soaks the public. A company fighting that will never be funded by anyone significant.

I never said it would be a company, or a business. You might call it a project, an effort, or something similar. The name is not important, only if it is achieving its target outcome.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com