Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano and early co-founder of Ethereum, says the American healthcare system is not broken. And he says that's a problem.
“Healthcare is a mess in America. It's a mess. Everyone knows it's true,” Hoskinson said in an interview with Coindsk Television at the Rare Evo Conference in Las Vegas. “But they're all trying to keep the system running because it's so profitable.”
That may sound like a harsh criticism, but Hoskinson puts the money where his mouth is. He is investing $200 million in investments at a medical center in Gillette, Wyoming.
What is his vision for his multi-million dollar investment? “If they can't pay, don't charge,” he said.
“Horrible” problem
So, what are the main issues with the current health care system that he has been poured into millions of new types of systems? According to Hoskinson, it's a doctor's payment method.
“All financial incentives are just so badly wrong within healthcare,” he told Coindesk TV, and using how doctors are incentivized to treat patients the same way, they were able to treat patients the same way, regardless of their needs.
“Let's say you're 75 years old and you're just a lot of cool, sick and not feeling well… your doctor will be paid the exact same amount to meet you… he or she will be paid for a 16-year-old girl coming for a UTI to need something like five minutes or antibiotics.”
He said its economic structure discourages adjustments, conversations and long-term planning. “They have developed chronic treatments for all of them, so they have every incentive to make you sick as long as possible,” Hoskinson argued.
And what sources have built up his poignant claims about the health care system? “My dad is a doctor, so my brother is a doctor. My grandfather was a doctor, my uncle is a doctor,” Hoskinson said.
Patient-centric solutions
To correct this, Hoskinson proposes building patient-centric facilities rather than billing codes or bureaucracy, and using cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain.
“Let's build a clinic that places patients in the centre. We'll do everything in our effort to build care teams, use AI and make it affordable patient-centric care.”
AI will be used in this new system to support physicians. “Every day, it hangs across all of your medical knowledge. And you can have an agent representing each specialist in medicine…and at the beginning of the day we will provide the provider with an up-to-date care plan.”
He said the system can catch “subtle clues in patient history” and assist in real-time audits. He also described the plan for an AI tool that flags drug-drug interactions, transcribs patient visits and ultimately serves as “AI companions” to help people interpret food labels, medications and supplements.
The architecture of the project may also include blockchain.
Hoskinson referenced selective disclosure and zero-knowledge techniques. This is a cryptographic tool that allows you to verify facts (such as age and citizenship) without revealing the details of the underlying individual. “We can fulfill the intentions and philosophy of those buckets without revealing the underlying customers,” he said.
He also plans to open source the entire model, including protocols and software, to allow replication elsewhere. “We're not here to make money from (it),” Hoskinson said. “The goal is to make them open source and software open source.
He also calls for a broader policy reset. “Health insurance should be the same as buying it in case you really get sick,” Hoskinson said. “Needless to say, it's there for when you get a paper cut or want to do birth control or something.”
However, Hoskinson argues that this new healthcare model faces pushbacks from traditional healthcare systems.
“The hospital is trying to kill us,” he insists.
“They do everything in their power to make our lives miserable. Um, they don't qualify our doctors. So it takes them six to 12 months to qualify to practice medicine. I bring in a world-renowned surgeon and a well-known transplant surgeon.
The fight to revamp Hoskinson's health care system may be a David vs. Goliath scenario, but he sees this as part of his and his family's legacy. “I've put my money in a $200 million clinic and have been building it for the past three years and I want to legally solve this issue,” he said.
“I think it's my legacy, my family legacy and the most important thing in America.”
