Health insurance must pay for exoskeletons

boing
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All the Last Wars at Once

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Yeah but they’re still coming for the white collar jobs.

Yeah, good luck with that. Got a hint for you: non-whites outnumber whites at least 10:1.

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I personally automated out quite a lot of one company’s work; a decade and half ago when it mattered the most it gave us significant business edge.

Now more and more of higher-level cognitive work is achievable for contemporary electronics. We are playing for time.

Defenders usually already have roughly 3:1 advantage. Further 3 times multiplier on battle efficiency is therefore needed.

More ammunition and better weapons are required, then, with superior logistics than what the adversary has. And maybe chemical weapons as a backup, or perhaps gene-specific biologicals.

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  1. Not in the US. Or Europe.

  2. Good luck getting people from half a world away to the US or even to Europe.

  3. Good luck assuming they will just all unite in areas where there are huge, deep cultural hatreds and dislikes. You have people fighting each other all over the world in their own countries, and leering at their heathen subhuman neighbors who may share a race, but that is it. And then good luck getting two other races to join forces as well.

  4. I am not sure why we are even entertaining a sick concept anyway.

  5. How did we get here from robot legs?

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Also, Russia. Which has quite a lot of nukes.

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But it’s not a 401k. Some people are extremely healthy and don’t use the services. They still see their premiums, co-pays, coinsurance continue to rise and their benefits continue to decrease.

Basically, it’s gambling and the odds are with the house, which is the insurance company. Health care shouldn’t be a gamble. It shouldn’t be for profit.

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I’m giving you a like for the citations. But I disagree with the crossing the road measurement. Obviously these decision-makers have never watched teenagers cross in a crosswalk while listening to music and texting on their phones.:wink:

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Right now the technology is too new and the possible sample size too small due to limited availability of exo-skeletons?

Just guessing, really.

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So what you are actually saying isn’t that “there is no way to measure the outcome” but, rather, “we haven’t measured the outcome yet.” Those are not equivalent statements.

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Yes. But the risk of doing something is that the person you help can turn around and sue for damages if it doesn’t turn out the way they expect. The costs of compliance are there because the device manufacturers need insurance to cover that eventuality; and the insurance companies won’t cover unless the risk is minimised sufficiently so that they can be sure to take a profit on providing coverage.

So now we’re back to square one again because you can’t force rescuers to put themselves at risk.

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“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” – William Shakespeare

…and he was right here then and he is right here now.

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Yes. @kthejoker does appear to have citations for studies done with one or more particular devices and there are some good criticisms to be had*, but right now I believe the technology is too new to do a reliable evaluation of the trade off in costs. It’s not like the exo-skeletons can be mass produced and tested with different subjects as we see with pharmaceuticals. Once patients get mobile, then one can measure the overall health effects.

But honestly, I’m with the person up thread who wonders if someone facing mobility issues might be a better person with respect to knowing what may work for them.

*I’m sick but I worked today. No reliable 4G connection, so I have yet to read the citations provided.

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You realize, as someone familiar with the works of Shakespeare, that the phrase you quote was said in jest, right? It wasn’t meant seriously.

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Maybe by accident but he was still right.

Do you know what’s ten thousand of dead lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?
A good start!

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As Chaucer wrote…Ful ofte in game a sooth I have herd saye!

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This from the guy who complains about people who buy Apple products, among other misanthropy. I’m not going to trust your opinions of other humans.

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You wonder why?

No need to. I don’t trust the opinion of the plebes anyway. They are too often just plain wrong.

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If everywhere you go, you meet assholes, eventually, you have to wonder if the problem might not be other people…

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I am not meeting assholes. I am meeting dumb people that don’t think nor know.

That’s quite a difference.

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The same principle applies.

The problem isn’t them. They’re just normal people.

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