[HN Gopher] YouTuber builds his own x-ray machine after $69k hos...
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YouTuber builds his own x-ray machine after $69k hospital bill
(2021)
Author : ck2
Score : 236 points
Date : 2022-03-24 12:52 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.popularmechanics.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.popularmechanics.com)
| vilhelm_s wrote:
| Steve Yegge tells the story[1] of his dad cooking:
|
| > When I was a teenager, my dad and my brother Mike decided to
| make homemade chili. I'd never seen it made before, and I watched
| with keen interest as they added beef, beans, some veggies and
| spices, and other ingredients. Dad would taste it, add some more
| ingredients, wait a bit, taste it again. My dad has some pretty
| good recipes. So you can imagine my puzzlement when he opened the
| cupboard, pulled out 2 cans of Hormel chili, opened them and
| dumped them in. I waited a respectful moment or two before asking
| him why he was adding canned chili to his chili.
|
| Similarly, I think it detracts a bit from building a home-made
| x-ray machine if one of the ingredients is an x-ray tube from an
| old x-ray machine.
|
| [1] http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/10/egomania-itself.html
| robocat wrote:
| Steve rants against Agile - classic.
|
| """ I waited a respectful moment or two before asking him why
| he was adding canned chili to his chili. They both said it
| tasted terrible, but, as my dad now-famously observed: "You can
| start with dog shit, and if you add enough chili, you get
| chili."
|
| Similarly, if you start with an Agile Methodology, and you add
| enough hard work, you get a bunch of work done. Go figure.
|
| But that's a tautology; you can substitute anything you like
| for "Agile Methodology" and it's still true. It's probably not
| difficult to find people who believe that Feng Shui has brought
| them success in their projects for years. Or throwing pennies
| in fountains. Heck, there are probably some people who practice
| witchcraft to help their projects out, and a great many of
| those projects -- probably the majority -- wind up being
| successful.
|
| If you do a rain dance for enough days in a row, it will
| eventually work. Guaranteed.
|
| So I'm not saying Agile doesn't work. It does work! But it's
| plain, unadulterated superstition. """
|
| Off topic, but thanks for the link.
| dekhn wrote:
| so, I'm a maker, and there's some things that aren't worth
| making yourself, but if you integrate them, you're still a
| maker. x-ray tubes are an example (in my case,
| microcontrollers, stepper motors, and microscope objectives).
|
| (I have actually built a crookes tube, for fun, but it wasn't
| particularly reliable or safe)
| odonnellryan wrote:
| Are programmers makers?
| dekhn wrote:
| Computer programmers are makers, but typically work on
| digital systems, where making is far, far easier.
| robbedpeter wrote:
| https://youtu.be/-0G4-JicCIw
|
| Diy xray tubes are doable, but I don't fault them for the store
| chili or the reused tube. It's not always important that parts
| be as authentically diy as the whole, in my view.
| octagons wrote:
| It's worth noting that William Osman stopped producing videos on
| his YouTube channel due to the fallout of this video.
|
| It was a long time coming because he comes off as very aloof and
| has received criticism about the safety of many other projects,
| but this one appears to have triggered a lot of outrage.
|
| FWIW, I think we need more young, brilliant minds sharing this
| kind of content. It has the entertainment value needed to capture
| the interest of young viewers who may not be otherwise interested
| in engineering disciplines. There are many, many other channels
| out there (backyard scientist, action lab, Cody's lab, stuff made
| here, etc.) who are very successful on YouTube, but they tend to
| cater to viewers who are deliberately choosing to watch their
| videos.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I agree with you. But the safety concerns are real.
|
| It's his life to risk, but during Edison's days, one of his
| assistants lost everything to x-ray damage. His body became
| totally deformed.
|
| Oddly, this Daily Mail article is somehow near the top of the
| results. But reading over it, it seems pretty accurate from
| what I remember.
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7180945/X-rays-ra...
|
| So it's not like the safety concerns are entirely off-base. But
| still, I agree that it's his life to risk.
| megous wrote:
| Just one exposure of the assistant is many orders of
| magnitude more exposure than this guy had for the entire
| experiment.
|
| It's not really comparable.
| swores wrote:
| Might I suggest that even on occasions when the Daily Mail (/
| Mail Online) has accurate content, they still don't deserve
| page views or advert impressions and that when not too hard
| other links would be better. I'm not sure how the exact
| content stacks up, but this Smithsonian Mag link was high in
| my search results
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/clarence-dally-the-
| ma...
|
| Anyway, thanks for the story that I hadn't heard before!
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| That's an interesting suggestion. May I ask why? I really
| don't know anything about it.
|
| The hesitation I had with sharing a daily mail link was "Is
| it accurate?" rather than whether they deserve impressions.
| It hadn't occurred to me that it might be a bad idea to
| support them.
| ftyers wrote:
| They're widely (although not universally) considered to
| be irredeemable in England after an article they
| published in 1934 entitled "Hurrah for the Blackshirts".
| RandallBrown wrote:
| Safety concerns are real and I believe William Osman manages
| them pretty well.
|
| Here's a "reacts" video where a radiologist agrees he's being
| pretty safe and what he's doing isn't that risky (assuming he
| knows what he's doing with high voltage.)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXJs598n3gE
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Thanks for this!
| 0x_rs wrote:
| That video also resulted in him, Osman, setting up a fake job
| application interview with one commenter for the sole purpose
| of filming and posting it online on his YouTube [0]. Which is,
| in my opinion, very petty and immature. It's good that he
| stopped making videos for the time being while learning what
| most creators online have to deal with and don't take to this
| level.
|
| 0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHyFihLolyg
| sevenf0ur wrote:
| Yeah, that whole video was very cringe-inducing.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| Thanks for that video. I now have MASSIVE respect for this
| dude. I don't think it's immature at all. It was a very fun
| way to call out this piece of shit of a person.
| neatze wrote:
| Why it is immature ?
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Getting worked up enough about a random internet comment to
| go to that length to try to humiliate the person is
| immature. Especially with a fraudulent job application.
|
| Here, let's try something out: Neatze, I think you're a big
| ol idiot.
|
| Now, what is your response going to be? Will you just shake
| your head and move on with your life? Or will you try to
| e-stalk me, set up a fake job interview for me, just so you
| can get a one up on me?
|
| Probably not, because I bet you're more mature than the
| dude in the video.
| invisible wrote:
| In a somewhat comical sense, it's pretty "mature" to draw
| up a contract with someone (a very "professional" thing
| to do) to prove a point that someone trolling on your
| video has no idea what they're talking about. How else
| could he prove the point in any other realistic manner?
|
| Calling something immature when it's a well thought-out
| and explored topic doesn't seem fair. He's touched on how
| random internet trolls hurt other YouTubers, not just
| him, in other videos (to show this isn't some impulsive
| thing).
| explaingarlic wrote:
| If you make tens of thousands of dollars a month on
| YouTube with AdSense, you are effectively a business. And
| indeed, many of these YouTubers have setup businesses in
| their name that receive the AdSense funds, and pay
| themselves a salary out of that.
|
| A company does not publicly humiliate a customer who
| makes a detrimental statement to its products - can you
| imagine the devastation from someone who is socially
| awkward and receives this kind of backlash for the
| horrific crime of speaking slightly out of line?
|
| Does your employer have a "worst employee of the month"
| poster with enumerated examples of all of the fuckups
| they made in the last month? That would be a million
| times less harmful than a pop-culture hack doing the same
| thing to you because you _said_ something out of line.
|
| People should be free to abuse each other online, call
| each other all sorts of stuff and _ESPECIALLY_ lie or
| stretch the truth, without facing offline scrutiny or
| embarrassment.
| dntrkv wrote:
| > A company does not publicly humiliate a customer who
| makes a detrimental statement to its products
|
| This happens quite often.
|
| It's very common to find reviews on Yelp where someone
| leaves a less-than-honest review and the company owner
| comes in and explains what a piece of shit that person
| was and how they aren't telling the whole story.
|
| If you come into a store and act like a dick towards the
| staff, you will almost certainly be publicly humiliated.
|
| It even happens with larger companies where someone goes
| to the media with some BS story, and then the company
| issues public statements about how that person is full of
| shit.
|
| I see nothing wrong with what William did. It may be
| petty, but who cares. If you don't want to be called out,
| don't be a troll.
| invisible wrote:
| I disagree with your opinion that people should be free
| to abuse others online without any scrutiny offline.
| Especially when people claim to be experts and assert
| authority on subjects.
|
| Also, what is with creating these fictional scenarios
| about an employer punishing a customer or employee? Even
| if "he" were a business, he's free to react to criticism
| however he chooses.
|
| My local barber chose to respond to negative reviews by
| chastising every single one. They still somehow have
| plenty of happy customers.
| googlryas wrote:
| There's nothing mature about violating contract law. It
| feels like fraudulent misrepresentation to me. Key
| aspects of fraudulent misrepresentation[0]:
|
| 1) a representation was made
|
| 2) the representation was false
|
| 3) that when made, the defendant knew that the
| representation was false or that the defendant made the
| statement recklessly without knowledge of its truth
|
| 4) that the fraudulent misrepresentation was made with
| the intention that the plaintiff rely on it
|
| 5) that the plaintiff did rely on the fraudulent
| misrepresentation
|
| 6) that the plaintiff suffered harm as a result of the
| fraudulent misrepresentation
|
| [0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fraudulent_misreprese
| ntation
| invisible wrote:
| I don't think Will committed fraudulent
| misrepresentation, if that could even apply or if this
| somehow caused harm. Either way, who said violating
| contract law was immature? Only you. Why suggest I did?
| What motive do you have here?
| 0x_rs wrote:
| If you watched the video, I'll have to be the one asking
| you -- why do you think looking up somebody from your
| comments section, making them sign agreements under a false
| pretence and setting up an interview, and then making fun
| of this individual talking about how "embarassing" he is in
| your videos is not immature? I won't even begin talking
| about brigading against somebody when you have a vast user
| base. Content creators have some unwritten responsibilities
| and such acts are uncommon because they usually do not fall
| into these things trying to make "a point".
| jaykk wrote:
| well, this specific commentor claimed to be an expert on
| this topic...
| Maursault wrote:
| It is irrelevant who said what, only what was said. It is
| not possible to validly counter an argument by attacking
| the man, which is why ad hominem is a fallacy. The
| logical way to have approached this is to ignore the man
| and point out the argument from authority, also a
| fallacy.
| TT-392 wrote:
| Pretty sure it was a combination of factors, not just this vid,
| and he just needed a break.
| octagons wrote:
| Yes, I agree it was many factors. This video seemed to be the
| breaking point, but it was certainly a long time coming. I
| recall several videos over the past 2 or so years where he
| drew attention to the invective he receives. I don't really
| participate beyond watching the videos, so perhaps there are
| others who are more informed about the factors behind his
| decision.
|
| Regardless, I wish him all the best and hope he'll find a way
| to showcase his talent or at least find fulfillment
| elsewhere.
| TT-392 wrote:
| As far as I heard listening to the podcast, I am not
| convinced he is done making videos. And even if he does end
| up stopping, they got a pretty great podcast which he seems
| to enjoy.
| ballenf wrote:
| He does a regular video podcast still on Youtube that has some
| pretty cool behind the scenes discussions. And an awesome
| title.
|
| Safety Third:
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7QE72cxiBkiwnvGoFfqYOg
| octagons wrote:
| Yes! This is a great podcast if you are a fan of William
| Osman, NileRed, Michael Reeves, Peter Sripol, and the like.
| mkdirp wrote:
| > It's worth noting that William Osman stopped producing videos
| on his YouTube channel due to the fallout of this video.
|
| Was it really because of that video? My impression from his
| last video was just people being unnecessarily mean to him for
| no reason in general, not just because of that video, but maybe
| I missed something.
|
| Personally, I was super impressed by this video. It was the
| first time I had seen his videos (or heard of him). It was an
| instant subscribe for me when I saw it.
|
| I hope he's doing well. He seemed in a really bad place in his
| final video.
| [deleted]
| jaykk wrote:
| he's okay and currently does a super nice podcast with other
| youtubers like nilred and the backyard scientist called
| "safety third". He will release videos sometime soon again -
| He talked about his backlog with his releases because he
| wanted to release a video about his mr. beast's squidgame
| involvement first and didnt find a good angle to tell the
| story.
| Ruthalas wrote:
| I enjoyed his main channel content, but found the first few
| episodes of the podcast to be a little rough going because
| they had a strong focus on complaining about the people
| complaining about their lack of safety measures. (Which
| just wasn't interesting listening to me.)
|
| Have the more recent episodes moved past that? I'd like to
| give it another shot.
| MivLives wrote:
| They have for the most part. It comes up occasionally
| now, and for the most part they're still as unfocused as
| normal. They rotate in people all the time which is fine.
| The last few episodes have been weirdly a lot about Taxes
| but the Nilegreen episode was interesting.
| mdrzn wrote:
| God I miss William.
|
| I hope he gets better (mentally), and he comes back to making
| videos.
| bluescrn wrote:
| It's strange that doing potentially-dangerous things with
| technology is frowned upon so much more than doing
| 'conventionally dangerous' stuff like base jumping, huge tricks
| on bikes/skateboards/snowboards, free climbing, and so on
| warent wrote:
| Probably conventionally dangerous stunts happen much more
| often than potentially dangerous engineering stuff. By
| definition you'll hear more outrage around more densely
| outrageous things. If more people did dangerous engineering
| stuff then it would be vice versa.
|
| Also perhaps a dangerous skateboard trick is less likely to
| harm anyone else but oneself, whereas an engineering disaster
| can catastrophic at a range
| atoav wrote:
| Skateboarders don't really create the impression that their
| sport is that one cheap trick to skip a propper medical
| X-Ray.
|
| Or phrased differently: there are no people with broken bones
| and insufficient funds looking at skateboarders and thinking:
| "I should do that, because I live in a nation without a
| propper health care system"
| a1pulley wrote:
| I think you mean "free solo climbing," not "free climbing."
| Free climbing means climbing with a rope and belayer but
| without artificial aid, like etriers or jumars.
| yupper32 wrote:
| Free climbing is dangerous enough to be in that list, IMO.
| Lots of things can go wrong even with ropes.
| ribosometronome wrote:
| Really? It seems to me like folk on YouTube generally get
| upset over folk doing dangerous things without framing them
| as such. Folk are upset at Alex Choi over his involvement
| with the recent Tesla jump that resulted in a crash and
| damaged property. There was a fair deal of outrage at Trevor
| Jacob within the aviation community over his apparent fake
| engine failure video, where he did the wrong thing even if
| the engine had failed. The Thought Emporium had folk wagging
| their finger at them when they had a video on a guy trying to
| modify his own genome so they wouldn't be lactose intolerant.
|
| But folk generally aren't mad with about things the
| Mythbusters' did, even though they could have been dangerous,
| because they were presented as dangerous. Folk have gotten
| into competitions to fill their backyards with the most foam
| they can -- which can be dangerous. But it's generally
| presented as that and they talk about the heat generated and
| such. Those sorts of things are generally presented as
| entertaining not a way to get around an expensive medical
| system or good idea.
| hammock wrote:
| Exposure to x-rays is harmful every time. In contrast,
| basejumping, skateboard tricks, etc. only pose a risk of
| harm.
| deltaonefour wrote:
| At the very worst (and it's not even at the worst) you can call
| this guy stupid for building something like that.
|
| But 69k for an xray? That's where the outrage should be
| directed. That's evil in it's purest form. More then just
| simple outrage, the person responsible for charging that 69k
| bill is someone that needs to go to jail.
|
| The sad thing is, the responsibility is distributed among the
| entire medical industry. It's very similar to the phenomenon of
| software engineer salaries.
| willis936 wrote:
| I was one of the commenters criticizing him, though I did not
| post anything until his dismissive response video.
|
| I made no personal attacks, but highlighted how dangerous it is
| to the audience to present 10+ kV supplies as no-big-deal toys.
| Everyone _can_ acquire an HV supply and play with it. Many of
| them even _should_ , but certainly not because of a video
| demonstrating ways to kill yourself with absolute no risk
| assessment.
| in0v8r wrote:
| This line of thinking is quite confusing to me. The amount of
| neglected children lucky enough to participate, unsupervised,
| in an experiment like this is certainly dramatically less
| than the amount you could save by hiring more social workers.
| With respect to supervision, why is responsibility being
| shifted away from parents? Blaming a YouTube video for your
| child's chronic exposure to X-rays is a poor excuse for not
| paying attention to you kid. Not to mention, the
| proliferation of this type of video would automatically
| expose the inherent danger as the safety-adverse content
| providers reveal the consequences.
| throwaway14572 wrote:
| I was saddened to see that he stopped producing videos after
| this. This is exemplary of a serious social problem we seem to
| have.
|
| I feel for him personally, because I've had a similar personal
| "ultimatum" regarding online interaction:
|
| I _don 't comment and don't contribute at all any more_ because
| the emotional load of what you receive in return just... Isn't
| worth it.
|
| So much nasty, pointless noise. I was taught as a kid to "Say
| nothing at all, if you have nothing nice to say". Now I'm
| sticking to it, and some.
|
| It's sad for sure, as this represents a macro-level chilling
| effect on social interaction.
|
| I don't want to be "that Evan guy" in the comments trolling,
| and I don't want to risk receiving the noise of trolls. So I
| just opted out.
|
| These days, I just passively consume things online, observing
| the waves of rage and bigotry, and letting them flow by,
| knowing I have no stake in their game.
|
| Things are _much better_ in real life, where I have great
| conversations with friends, family, and coworkers. We can get
| in to deep conversations and negativity isn 't taken personally
| like that. Because the bandwidth is higher between participants
| and we care about each other.
|
| The only remaining way I contribute, is to create one-off
| accounts, say what I think if it's nice, and never look at it
| again. I don't want to see the responses, because they just
| lure you in to wanting to respond, and they end up wasting
| emotional space in my mind.
| abnercoimbre wrote:
| I explained once that I think social media as-is _must_
| perish. A more humane business model should rise from the
| ashes. Responses boiled down to shrugs stating Twitter
| reflects society and we can 't escape it.
|
| I'll remain optimistic.
| monksy wrote:
| I think that a lot of society has changed for the worse given
| the freedom and aggressive adoption of tech companies
| "disrupting." (What I mean is: They're given the ability to
| try to aggressively make money at all costs and force their
| will. Consequences on people, rights, laws be damned.)
|
| Youtube has no interest in curating great content by
| creators. They just want to keep that money printer going and
| keeping people on the site. There was a comment somewhere
| about the views that someone gets.. honest, good, and
| educational content doesn't get rewarded as much as a person
| doing pranks that harm people.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Was it really the fallout from this video? William got hit by
| the same thing most other good Youtubers like him struggle
| with: Burnout. Youtube and the algorithm want you to put out
| content every day, and will penalize you, and literally give
| you less money if you don't. This sucks for the "science"
| youtubers because their videos are projects that often require
| months of work and sometimes don't pan out.
|
| NileRed, and close friend of William Osman's, has also
| significantly reduced his output, because it's absurd. Google
| wants you to kill yourself putting out as much content as
| possible, and doesn't care if you have to reduce quality or
| literally die as a result. If you quit, someone new will take
| your place.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > If you quit, someone new will take your place.
|
| Why is this a bad thing?
|
| You wouldn't actually prefer if Google kept new creators from
| getting views just to benefit old creators who aren't
| producing as much content, would you?
|
| > Google wants you to kill yourself putting out as much
| content as possible, and doesn't care if you have to reduce
| quality or literally die as a result.
|
| No, Google does not want you to "literally die". They aren't
| taking anything away from old YouTubers by letting users
| watch content from new YouTubers.
|
| YouTube is an increasingly crowded content and more and more
| creators are vying for views and advertising dollars. You're
| ascribing a lot of malice to Google, but you're literally
| just describing market competition.
|
| The alternative (keeping new content creators locked out so
| old content creators could continue to profit more) is
| obviously not viable.
| hackmiester wrote:
| His followup video about burnout repeatedly referenced the
| comments he got about the X-ray video. So I'd say it was a
| large contributing factor.
| chrononaut wrote:
| > Youtube and the algorithm want you to put out content every
| day, and will penalize you, and literally give you less money
| if you don't.
|
| I am not familiar with Youtube's payment system. Are you
| saying they do something like reduce the $ per ad / per view
| you receive based on the age of the video?
| beaconstudios wrote:
| That's why a lot of project based channels lean more on
| sponsorships, patreon and youtube members for a regular
| income.
|
| For example, thought emporium (my favourite science youtuber)
| puts out videos very rarely but they're always big innovative
| projects and he makes enough to have bought a new lab
| recently.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| In this case, I think it's safe for the viewers to share some
| of the blame with Google.
| dntrkv wrote:
| William himself said the reason he is stopping is because of
| the trolls. I don't remember him mentioning the algorithms at
| all.
| piyh wrote:
| Cody's Lab did a video series on making yellow cake uranium
| that got him a visit from g men. Most everything Colin Furze
| does has mortal danger. Styropyro is probably also on a
| watchlist. Williams project was dangerous, but I don't see a
| reason why he should be a pariah.
| anitil wrote:
| From memory I believe the reason he got the visit was because
| he made a joke about creating a fusion reactor - something
| like "until I get my fusion reactor running I'll need to use
| the sun"
| hef19898 wrote:
| Promoting dangerous projects on a platform accessible by
| _children_ (yes, I did it, I said think about the children!)
| should be a reason to be called out.
| qazpot wrote:
| If we follow that route a lot of internet would need to be
| banned.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Well, there's a reason why we have Youtoube and PornHub
| on the other hand, don't we?
| mwint wrote:
| ... which are both accessible by children. I don't see
| the point you're making?
| hef19898 wrote:
| If you don't get the difference between a dedicated adult
| site, with adult content, and a general public platform I
| see why you don't see the point.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| That's why there is Youtube Kids [1]. See, the content is
| separated. Kids shouldn't be on youtube.
|
| [1] https://www.youtubekids.com/
| adolph wrote:
| _YouTube Kids is mostly safe, but there 's a small chance
| kids could see nudity, violence, or just weird stuff, as
| well as ads for stuff like junk food. Our study found
| that 27% of videos watched by kids 8 and under are
| intended for older target audiences, with violence being
| the most likely negative content type. . . . On the plus
| side for parents, YouTube offers fair warning that kids
| may see something that you don't want them to see and you
| can block and report inappropriate videos._
|
| https://www.commonsensemedia.org/articles/parents-
| ultimate-g...
| bencollier49 wrote:
| YouTube Kids is not safe for kids. Am a parent, stopped
| allowing that long ago.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| You're right. A parent giving children access to all of the
| physical equipment to make this, and leaving them so
| unsupervised that they can do it is fine. The bad thing is
| making a video of you doing it, in case people pretend
| you're promoting it.
|
| This is why I will never let my children read a car manual.
| What if they build a car and run someone over?
| xattt wrote:
| A car manual only tells you how to operate a specific
| model of a car, not how to build one ;)
| jstarfish wrote:
| It's frighteningly easy for children to get their hands
| on materials like arsenic and thallium. All they need is
| a credit card and a YouTube tutorial helpfully walking
| them through the dosage.
|
| I used to share your perspective. Then I ended up with a
| [step]kid whose only interests in medicine and
| engineering keep me awake at night.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I get where you're coming from. I knew a kid who was
| really into making explosives, he ended up blowing
| himself up one night after cooking up a batch of TATP.
| Pretty tragic story, he was a bright kid. As I remember,
| I think he had a single mom who couldn't quite be there
| for him.
|
| I think the best way of dealing with that sort of
| situation is to find them a mentor or role model that can
| show them how it's actually done and turn the interest
| into something that can be explored safely. I think if my
| friend had actually known real chemists that could mentor
| him and that he could talk to about his projects, there's
| a chance he might have been alive today.
|
| There are things that have an element of danger, and then
| there are things that are reckless bordering on suicidal.
| Any real world chemist would probably just stare at you
| in disbelief if you told them you wanted to make TATP in
| your bedroom. That isn't just dangerous, it's moronic,
| beyond reckless.
|
| This stuff is highly explosive and notoriously difficult
| to handle because of its volatility and propensity for
| spontaneous detonation. You don't know that if you're 15
| and getting all your advice from the Internet, though.
| You may even hear a nickname like "mother of satan" and
| think it sounds pretty cool. Turns out chemists usually
| give substances nicknames like that for a reason.
|
| I think what's the most dangerous is kids experimenting
| alone without any experience based advice from some dodgy
| internet forum.
| zen_1 wrote:
| "All they need is a credit card and ..."
|
| The idea of children having access to a credit card
| strikes me as dangerous and irresponsible for many more
| reasons than just the odd chance that they use it to buy
| chemicals online.
|
| If you want to buy something as a child, you use cash or
| get a parent's permission.
|
| (Preempting the "ok boomer" responses, I'm 22 this year)
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > If you want to buy something as a child, you use cash
|
| Agreed, cash is harder to trace
| zen_1 wrote:
| True, but I think we're talking about different ages of
| kid here :)
| cableshaft wrote:
| It's possible they have access to the credit card without
| permission. Most people don't keep their credit cards
| locked up in a gun safe.
|
| Mine could be retrieved right now out of my wallet lying
| on a tray in my living room. I also don't have children,
| so I'm not particularly concerned personally. I haven't
| caught my dogs buying anything online yet.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| If your kid can and will do things like steal your credit
| card, make unauthorized purchases and buy explosives..
| the problem is not that William Osman didn't wear PPE.
| zen_1 wrote:
| I remember my own experience with "youtube explosives" as
| a kid.
|
| I'd watched NurdRage's video [1] on how to extract
| lithium from a certain type of battery and thought that
| sounded like fun, so I asked my father to help me get the
| batteries needed. When he then asked me why I needed this
| specific type of (not cheap) battery, I showed him [1]
| and he said "That looks dangerous and fun, let's do it
| together" (or something to that effect).
|
| One hour and some needle nose pliers later, we're down
| one battery and a burn hole in our bathroom tiles (as a
| result of a lithium fire that my father immediately
| suffocated), but up a bonding experience.
|
| Had I tried to disassemble the battery alone (ignoring
| for a moment how I'd have gotten my hands on it in the
| first place without my father's knowledge, perhaps by
| stealing a credit card or with an Alexa's assistance, as
| other posters have suggested might happen), I probably
| would have attempted to extinguish the burning lithium by
| pouring water on it, which I'm sure would have gone
| excellently :).
|
| I guess the moral of my story is that it's probably more
| effective to try to earn your kids' trust and ensure
| their safety yourself, rather than attempt to child-proof
| the rest of the world (with the assumption that your
| children will be going behind your back in their attempts
| to earn Darwin awards in new and exciting ways).
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BliWUHSOalU
| elliekelly wrote:
| Children don't even need to root around in a parent's
| wallet. They can just ask Alexa.
| zen_1 wrote:
| Stealing your parent's credit card strikes me as the more
| pressing issue here, rather than a youtube video that
| shows you how to do something dangerous.
| Loughla wrote:
| You can buy most of these things on amazon with one
| click.
|
| Source: all of the chemicals I've purchased to blow up
| tree stumps and what-not that I'm sure have me on some
| watch list somewhere.
| s0rce wrote:
| You can get thallium on Amazon? I can't think of a common
| consumer application of thallium is it in some product?
| duskwuff wrote:
| There is at least one vendor selling a sample of thallium
| in an acrylic cube as a collector's item. Unclear how
| much is actually present, but any perceptible amount
| would be pretty dangerous if removed from its enclosure.
| dekhn wrote:
| WARNING: this is serious stuff. Read https://www.cdc.gov/
| niosh/ershdb/emergencyresponsecard_29750... and
| https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/thallium-
| poisoning... and
| https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/chemist-
| poisoning...
|
| I think you have to go to specialty suppliers.
| https://luciteria.com/elements-for-sale/thallium-
| metal-9999
| HideousKojima wrote:
| You must think all of the high school physics classes that
| build pumpkin trebuchets are monstrous then.
| buescher wrote:
| I checked out all of Alfred Morgan's books from multiple
| public libraries (a platform accessible by children!!!) in
| the seventies and early eighties. Probably saw the golden
| book of chemistry experiments at some point too - it looked
| very familiar when I got a copy of the pdf as an adult. I
| think the difficulty of obtaining model T spark coils,
| chemicals ("ask your druggist") etc kept me out of a lot of
| trouble.
| Hydraulix989 wrote:
| Ah yes, the think of the children argument. This is why
| other nice things like chemistry sets and science fiction /
| fantasy books are also banned.
| vinyl7 wrote:
| Maybe it's time we don't allow children on the internet.
| Same way we don't allow children to wonder around in the
| city by themselves
| kube-system wrote:
| COPPA is coming up on its 22nd anniversary, it's due for
| an update.
| mschuetz wrote:
| Since when do we not allow children to wander around by
| themselves? It's perfectly normal in Austria.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Since we do the latter, I don't see problems with the
| former.
| anamax wrote:
| Huh?
|
| Where and when don't we allow children to wander around
| the city by themselves?
|
| In many large cities, kids are expected to use public
| transit to get to/from school. It's not unknown for
| parents to send kids on errands. And, how does the kid
| get to the park?
|
| This "kids can't go anywhere alone" idea is very new.
|
| My Mom complained that the one route that I never used to
| go to/from school is the one that she showed me.
| sho_hn wrote:
| It seems to be a recent development in some larger
| American cities.
|
| I work in a company in Berlin that has job applicants
| from many different countries, including the US. Common
| question during the process (we generally require
| relocation at this point) are:
|
| - "Can my 12yo children go somewhere alone? I'm from
| Portland/similar and this is not the case here and it's
| why we're moving."
|
| - "We've been looking and it's really hard to find an
| apartment in Berlin. We have this ground-floor option,
| but they just shot the ground-floor windows in across the
| street here again this morning. Is ground floor safe in
| Berlin?
|
| I'm no longer surprised when it comes up, but it's quite
| sad.
| mschuetz wrote:
| Since when do we not allow children to wander around by
| themselves? It's perfectly normal in Austria.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Same way we don't allow children to wonder around in
| the city by themselves
|
| Here in Germany, it's absolutely no problem for kids aged
| 8 to go to school on their own.
|
| On the other hand, we offer public transport and our
| cities _are_ walkable...
| hef19898 wrote:
| Taking the Munich subway during school rush hour was
| always fun!
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Oh, a fellow person from Munich! HN is a village.
| hef19898 wrote:
| It really is!
| rootusrootus wrote:
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Ah yes, children building X-Ray machines and pulsejet
| engines without parental supervision, of course.
| adolph wrote:
| And nukes! Its been a while since I read "The Radioactive
| Boy Scout" and after rereading it I'm defintely going to
| keep my kid close as he goes through TCOR's black powder
| and other experiments.
|
| _The truth is far more bizarre: the Golf Manor Superfund
| cleanup was provoked by the boy next door, David Hahn,
| who attempted to build a nuclear breeder reactor in his
| mother's potting shed as part of a Boy Scout merit-badge
| project._
|
| [...]
|
| _David Hahn taught himself to build a neutron gun. He
| figured out a way to dupe officials at the Nuclear
| Regulatory Commission into providing him with crucial
| information he needed in his attempt to build a breeder
| reactor, and then he obtained and purified radioactive
| elements such as radium and thorium._
|
| [...]
|
| _David's parents admired his interest in science but
| were alarmed by the chemical spills and blasts that
| became a regular event at the Hahn household. After David
| destroyed his bedroom--the walls were badly pocked, and
| the carpet was so stained that it had to be ripped out--
| Ken and Kathy banished his experiments to the basement._
|
| [...]
|
| _Kathy then forbade David from experimenting in her
| home. So he shifted his base of operations to his
| mother's potting shed in Golf Manor. Both Patty Hahn and
| Michael Polasek admired David for the endless hours he
| spent in his new lab, but neither of them had any idea
| what he was up to. Sure, they thought it was odd that
| David often wore a gas mask in the shed and would
| sometimes discard his clothing after working there until
| two in the morning, but they chalked it up to their own
| limited education. Michael says that David tried to
| explain his experiments but that "what he told me went
| right over my head." One thing still sticks out, though.
| David's potting-shed project had something to do with
| creating energy. "He'd say, `One of these days we're
| gonna run out of oil.' He wanted to do something about
| that."_
|
| https://harpers.org/archive/1998/11/the-radioactive-boy-
| scou...
| [deleted]
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Maybe we should just ban children going outside lest they
| see an adult doing something unsafe.
| agumonkey wrote:
| You can add: photonicinduction. Everybody looks crazy until
| they're next to this dude. The dimensions involved scare me,
| and his "goes to 11 is not enough" attitude makes it even
| worse.
| snerbles wrote:
| Photonicinduction's videos fulfill the wild mad electrical
| engineering fantasies I never had the guts to try as an
| undergrad.
| 0des wrote:
| There is no pearl clutching in science.
| zen_1 wrote:
| I believe (though my memory is foggy, so don't quote me on
| this) Styropyro was approached by some military/DARPA
| projects with an employment offer, but he reportedly turned
| it down.
| rhinoceraptor wrote:
| Colin Furze's videos are much worse in the way he shows not
| using safety gear. At least an X-Ray tube is hard to come by,
| hard to use and people generally know it's dangerous.
| iso1631 wrote:
| He has a safety tie
| teetertater wrote:
| Even that seems not to be featured anymore in his latest
| videos
| lsllc wrote:
| Colin was arrested in 2010:
|
| https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/plumber-arrested-on-
| fi...
|
| (I was going to find a "better" source, but the Mirror's
| version is a bit more entertaining).
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| > an X-Ray tube is hard to come by
|
| I don't know what energies you need for medical imaging,
| but a keV linear electron accelerator is commonly called "a
| CRT", and it's already powerful enough to screw you up if
| you really try.
|
| (Of course, the power supply, the flyback converter, and
| all the other stuff you get at immediately upon opening the
| case are plenty dangerous even without all the effort it
| takes to get ionizing radiation out of the tube.)
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Colin Furze is basically a first world mining operation
| compared to the "look at how they do <insert thing here> in
| <insert equatorial country here>" type videos that nobody
| takes any issue with.
|
| There's a double standard in there somewhere.
| RF_Savage wrote:
| After Osmans video all cheap x-ray tubes ware just gone on
| ebay for weeks.
|
| This often happens.
|
| The video also did not really emphazise the dangers
| involved.
| danw1979 wrote:
| Of Course we should set a good example when it comes to
| working with dangerous things in our youtube videos. We
| should use PPE at all times and give clear warnings about
| the risks throughout the video...
|
| ... But Maybe if you're too stupid to realise that a safety
| tie isn't actually protective, then maybe your upcoming
| appointment with evolution is overdue.
| Loughla wrote:
| Alternate option - stemming from the OP comment - if we
| want to get _children_ involved in engineering and
| science fields, and this kind of _cool shit science_ is
| how we can easily do it, they absolutely have to assume a
| portion of their audience won 't know what is real and
| what isn't.
|
| In other words, not everyone is you. Always remember
| that.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Wiley Coyote and the roadrunner rarely wear appropriate
| PPE. ;) Kids don't watch any cartoons, do they?
| _fat_santa wrote:
| After watching his X-Ray video, I watched the video where he
| said he was done with it. The guy needed to stop reading all
| his comments. Joe Rogan literally has a bit about this exact
| situation with Youtube comments.
| Maursault wrote:
| Poor Joe Rogan just can't get a break while singing dangerous
| praises as though Gospel. He uses his platform irresponsibly,
| gives voice to crackpots and idiots, and is prone to
| disseminating misinformation, which makes him remarkably
| dangerous. Rogan, Hannity and Carlson are only for the weak-
| minded.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| trident5000 wrote:
| Sorry people you dont agree with can have a voice. Theres
| no such thing as a "dangerous" opinion. Learn to listen to
| all sides and let others listen to all sides and then make
| independent decisions. The way you battle terrible speech
| is with countering speech, not shutting down conversation
| to your liking.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| Damn after I found out he made it a habit to say a
| particular racial slur on the show I figured people were
| done with this guy. Can't fathom how people think he's
| defensible (and indeed, not a single downvote has left a
| defense).
| datavirtue wrote:
| Why is the reaction "stop making videos?" You can serve
| videos from Cloudflare and sell your own ad placements to pay
| the paltry fees...with no one hanging over you. These content
| creators could easily use YouTube to promote their own site
| and pivot away.
| [deleted]
| mrtksn wrote:
| Woah, I was wondering why I'm not seeing new videos from him.
|
| Turn's out, he even made a video about it and I simply missed
| it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVCpKfedfok
| strunz wrote:
| Seems like he's coming back and outsourcing the editing -
| https://twitter.com/WilliamOsman/status/1486815129563918338
| newacct0 wrote:
| atum47 wrote:
| He kinda quit after this video. Apparently people gave him all
| kinds of sh*t in the comments
| mistrial9 wrote:
| adverse legal actions with non-disclosure perhaps?
| kadoban wrote:
| No. Youtube is just toxic to one's mental health.
| atum47 wrote:
| I kinda agree with you. Seems they were even after his
| girlfriend, being overweight or something.
| dekhn wrote:
| Rightfully so. I've worked with people who are qualified to do
| this (literally, a person who stared into a synchrotron) but
| they limit their commentary to the scientific literature.
| criddell wrote:
| Were you unable to turn comments off back then?
| blamazon wrote:
| Turning off comments as an independent YouTube creator is
| these days potential career suicide, as 'engagement' is a
| huge part of the algorithm.
|
| What you're "supposed" to do these days, is engage with
| comments (literally like and reply!) early in your career,
| when the stream of feedback small and manageable, to drive
| engagement, and stop looking when they become unmanageable.
| This strategy is rewarded by YouTube.
|
| Many creators struggle to draw that line because it can feel
| like turning their back on their fans.
| pkstn wrote:
| How on earth can x ray cost $69,210.32? Here in Finland it costs
| something like 20 EUR (well, I know that's not the true cost, but
| still).
| phkahler wrote:
| >> How on earth can x ray cost $69,210.32? Here in Finland it
| costs something like 20 EUR (well, I know that's not the true
| cost, but still).
|
| How can an x-ray cost more than a pair of shoes? They used to
| use x-rays at the shoe store to check fit - for free. Say this
| to any doctor in the US and watch the silence on their face.
| kube-system wrote:
| A radiologist may give you a better medical diagnosis.
|
| "Is my foot broken? Not sure, but it's a size 10"
| recuter wrote:
| The doctors of course have as much to do with the price of
| x-rays as Al Bundy.
| imgabe wrote:
| > "I avoided surgery, but they still billed nearly $70,000,"
| Osman tells Popular Mechanics, adding that the bill included an
| abdominal CT scan, medication, and two nights in a hospital
| room.
|
| Still exorbitant, but it wasn't just for the X-ray. Ultimately
| it's because hospitals and insurance companies are part of a
| legal price-fixing scheme.
| lbriner wrote:
| I was wondering the same. Sure, I get the fact that people can
| hike the prices but I thought that the insurance companies
| would not allow a hospital to charge whatever they like, at
| least if you want to claim it from insurance.
|
| XRay machines are pretty basic afaik compared to say, an MRI
| and at that price you could get 2 nights in the New York Hilton
| penthouse!
| RandallBrown wrote:
| It wasn't just the X Ray that cost 69k. At the end of the video
| he calls an urgent care place and it's about $70 for an X Ray.
| jpollock wrote:
| It costs that much in an emergency room, where the price is
| based on having multiple x-ray machines + radiologists
| available, 24/7, 365 with a 5 minute wait.
|
| If you go to a clinic, which works 9-5 M-F, they're $40 (chest
| x-ray for a green card), 20minute wait.
| deltaonefour wrote:
| 7-11 is 24/7 hours too and an even faster wait time for a ice
| cold coke.
|
| I can't tell if your post is just illustrating the difference
| or justifying it because a 5 minute wait time and 24/7
| radiologists on call doesn't justify 69k in any reality.
| dekhn wrote:
| rack rates, amortization, standing infrastructure.
|
| Most people don't pay rack rates (that's the quote for $69K),
| many orgs amortize costs across many people, and hospitals run
| 24/7 and have to maintain a lot of standing infra. The capital
| costs for acquiring a pro-grade x-ray (and staff it) are
| nontrivial.
|
| But yes, a single x-ray should never cause a bill for $69K.
| Even if the user only pays $5K.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| It doesn't cost that it's just that medical fraud is legal in
| the US.
| nisegami wrote:
| YouTuber = William Osman
|
| It always bothers me when blogs don't include the person name's
| in the title and just refer to them as "YouTuber". It's less
| egregious when it's social media like Reddit, but it's different
| when it's the way they earn a living.
| geoffeg wrote:
| They have to get you to click the link to find the name so they
| can get the ad impressions. However, you saved me a click!
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| They also have to stir up outrage by falsifying not only how
| much the person was billed, but also implying that the bill
| was simply for an x ray.
| chasd00 wrote:
| And there's no way the insurance company paid $66.5K. The
| dollar amount on the bill is like the opening of the
| negotiation, it always starts way high and comes down from
| there. There's a rule that if an insurance company pays the
| bill you send them then you undercharged.
| cjrp wrote:
| It's in the video, the insurance company paid about $8.5k
| and he paid another $2.5k. So you're absolutely right,
| that $69k bill turned into $11k pretty quickly.
| Tronno wrote:
| I'm not sure how 2.5k for an x-ray and antibiotics is
| anything less than outrageous. Perhaps that's pocket change
| for this crowd?
|
| And that's after insurance. The full price is unthinkable
| to me - most people would be ruined for years.
| floor2 wrote:
| Because, like every other rage-bait article about
| healthcare in America, it's a blatant lie.
|
| The article states in addition to the x-ray that "the
| bill included an abdominal CT scan, medication, and two
| nights in a hospital room". American hospitals are full
| of multimillion dollar equipment and trained specialists
| staffed around the clock.
|
| "The full price" is a fiction relevant only to
| negotiation of actual price between providers and
| government/institutional payers, no individual ever pays
| that. It's an imaginary number used to start price
| discovery so that the hospital, insurance companies and
| critically the government medicare/medicaid program can
| make some set of concessions and discounts so that in the
| end everyone comes to a "win-win" agreement.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| My comment was not intended to indicate whether or not
| $2.5k is or is not outrageous.
|
| The point of my comment is that $69k was apparently
| deemed to be sufficiently more outrageous and hence
| clickbait worthy such that it incentivized the writer to
| lie about the facts.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| No. If I go to a hospital and get things done, and do not
| give them an insurance card, they can send me a bill for
| whatever numbers they want, and _I am legally required to
| pay that!_
|
| The fact that you can often negotiate when you have a
| large debt that you are unlikely to pay _does not change
| the fact that the debt is legitimate_
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Sure, but that is not relevant here because the person in
| the article did not receive a bill for $69k. My comments
| were strictly about the "journalist" painting the wrong
| picture about this specific scenario in order to incite
| emotion, presumably in order to get more people to click.
| ars wrote:
| An x-ray in the US is around $30 if you pay for it
| yourself. The 2.5K is the article lying to you to get
| clicks.
| cbozeman wrote:
| I don't think that's by accident.
|
| If someone works in legacy media, like network and cable
| television, printed newspaper or magazine, and they don't
| clearly see the shift away from print and broadcast media to
| Internet video, then they're totally behind the curve, and they
| doing exactly what you always see people in dying prominent
| institutions do - struggle to maintain relevancy using any
| method possible. In this case, I would argue, "downplaying" so-
| called "new media" people.
|
| Sam Harris said it best when explaining why he doesn't make
| book writing his focus any longer: "I can reach 100,000 people
| by writing a book, which will take about a year from idea to
| published hardcover, or I can record a podcast, which will take
| a day, and reach 500,000 people."
| hexane360 wrote:
| This is just how you write headlines though. It's not "<some
| person you've never heard of> proposes bill", it's "California
| state senator proposes bill". It's not "<some random engineer>
| makes new technology", it's "Engineer makes new technology".
|
| I don't think it's related to trying to devalue 'YouTuber' as a
| profession.
| icholy wrote:
| I believe he is an engineer.
| [deleted]
| dewey wrote:
| > After receiving a medical treatment that included a round of
| antibiotics and an X-ray scan, Californian Will Osman thought
| he got stuck with a $69,000 hospital bill. Luckily, Osman's
| insurance covered most of the bill, but that still left him on
| the hook for $2,500.
|
| That's the first sentence of the article. Doesn't that cover
| that pretty well?
| xeromal wrote:
| I think they mean his name should be in the title of the
| article.
| dewey wrote:
| Doesn't really make sense to me. If it would say "Will
| Osman Builds His Own X-Ray Machine" it doesn't really
| convey the same message as "YouTuber" which is kinda
| equivalent to "a regular person" and not a professional
| x-ray engineer.
| hef19898 wrote:
| I highly doubt a professional would do it, or at the very
| least not post it oblibe if they did.
| scrumbledober wrote:
| I'm sure there's room for "Youtuber William Osman Builds
| His Own X-Ray Machine"
| xwdv wrote:
| So much hospital bill stuff is just rampant clickbait. A man got
| a $120k hospital bill after an allergy attack, a baby costs $36k
| to be born, etc.
|
| No one actually pays these amounts without insurance and if you
| have no insurance you probably don't pay at all and just default
| on the debt. No one is paying this. No one. You never hear
| stories of people being utterly bankrupted by a huge hospital
| bill.
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| Quite literally the biggest cause of bankruptcies in the US.
| http://www.pnhp.org/docs/AJPHBankruptcy2019.pdf
| anamax wrote:
| The data in that paper doesn't support the conclusion.
|
| Loss of income was the big problem, by far.
| rdedev wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/14/health-insur...
|
| An article about insured people going medically bankrupt. When
| things go according to plan and insurance covers everything it
| all good but when it doesn't it next to impossible for people
| to afford it. And it's not like bankrupois without consequences
| xwdv wrote:
| The medical bill isn't why they go bankrupt. They lose their
| job to disability and thus their income and now they can't
| pay any kind of bills. Or they were just in a bad financial
| state to begin with.
| aqme28 wrote:
| > You never hear stories of people being utterly bankrupted by
| a huge hospital bill.
|
| Isn't medical bankruptcy the leading cause of bankruptcy? What
| are you talking about?
| anamax wrote:
| > Isn't medical bankruptcy the leading cause of bankruptcy?
|
| No.
|
| People go broke when they get sick because they can't work.
|
| Medical bills are the easiest to dodge.
| damontal wrote:
| medical bills get sent to collections just like any other
| bill
| xwdv wrote:
| Part of the reason why health insurance is so expensive
| is that so many simply do not pay their bills. You
| subsidize all these people with your premiums.
| ars wrote:
| And that's where they stay. Nothing happens if you just
| ignore them.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Doesn't that destroy your credit?
| xwdv wrote:
| No
| marcusverus wrote:
| The idea that medical bankruptcy is the leading cause of
| bankruptcy is a carefully engineered fiction. The claim is
| normally worded something like "2/3 of bankruptcies are
| caused by medical bills" and includes a reference to an
| academic study[0], so it sounds super legit! But not only
| does the study _not_ support the claim--it clearly
| contradicts the idea that Medicare For All would improve the
| situation.
|
| You're probably rolling your eyes right around now, so I'll
| dispense with the characterizations and move on to the proof.
|
| First of all, here's the actual main takeaway from the study:
|
| > 62.1% of all bankruptcies have a medical cause.
|
| Huh. "having a medical cause" is far from "caused by medical
| bills", right?. I wonder what "a medical cause" means?
|
| > We included debtors who either (1) cited illness or injury
| as a specific reason for bankruptcy (27%), or (2) reported
| uncovered medical bills exceeding $1,000 in the past [two]
| years (27%), or (3) lost at least two weeks of work-related
| income because of illness/injury,(27%) or (4) mortgaged a
| home to pay medical bills. (2%)
|
| So if I had a $1000 dollar operation two years ago, paid it
| off, then filed bankruptcy when my small business tanked last
| month, mine would be a "Medical bankruptcy".
|
| Further down in the article, it gets better:
|
| Only 35% of debtors had medical bills >$5000, while 92% of
| the 62% ("medical bankruptcies") had medical bills >$5000.
| But the average net worth for "medical bankruptcies" was
| _-$44,000_ (negative $44,000), while the average annual
| income was $31,000. In other words, these are people who,
| even in the absence of their medical debt, would almost
| certainly have been filing for bankruptcy anyway.
|
| BTW--the median income of one of these bankruptcies, in
| conjunction with their median household size of 2.79, makes
| it clear that the vast majority of them were be eligible for
| Medicaid! Would a rebranding of their state-run healthcare
| leave them any better off?
|
| [0] https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(09)00404-5/full
| tex...
| xwdv wrote:
| I feel a lot of this should have been obvious to the HN
| crowd but it seems like they fell for the fiction.
| haveyoubeen wrote:
| Why do you think insurance companies are so happy to pay
| these exorbitant sums to the medical industry?
|
| Like what is there motivation?
|
| Anyone with a brain can see none of this makes sense. You
| have planted an entire forest of bullshit above that nobody
| can verify is true or not.
|
| The middle class is being wiped out. Everyone knows this.
| It's happening from all angles and everyone knows medical
| bills are one of the main weapons used by the government to
| do it.
| marcusverus wrote:
| > Why do you think insurance companies are so happy to
| pay these exorbitant sums to the medical industry?
|
| I have no idea what you're asking.
|
| > Anyone with a brain can see none of this makes sense.
|
| We're in full agreement!
|
| > You have planted an entire forest of bullshit above
| that nobody can verify is true or not.
|
| If only I'd linked the study!
|
| > The middle class is being wiped out. Everyone knows
| this.
|
| Yes, with more people moving to the upper class than the
| lower.[0] And the increase in lower-class households is
| _totally_ unrelated to the fact that all US population
| growth is driven by low-skill immigration!
|
| > It's happening from all angles and everyone knows
| medical bills are one of the main weapons used by the
| government to do it.
|
| Of course! Democratic governments with consumer-driven
| economies are notorious for their hatred of the middle
| class!
|
| [0]https://www.pewresearch.org/social-
| trends/2016/05/11/america...
| rsynnott wrote:
| > and if you have no insurance you probably don't pay at all
| and just default on the debt. [..] You never hear stories of
| people being utterly bankrupted by a huge hospital bill.
|
| ... I mean, I assume one of the more common methods of
| defaulting is bankruptcy?
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I didn't know you could default on a debt without later going
| bankrupt to get relief from debt collectors
| ghotli wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25
|
| ^^ I won't editorialize much, but this is the first thing I
| thought of.
|
| _It was involved in at least six accidents between 1985 and
| 1987, in which patients were given massive overdoses of
| radiation. Because of concurrent programming errors (also known
| as race conditions), it sometimes gave its patients radiation
| doses that were hundreds of times greater than normal, resulting
| in death or serious injury._
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Chemotherapy radiation is not x-ray radiation.
| ghotli wrote:
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
|
| Hope you enjoyed the link regardless
| roywiggins wrote:
| "The machine had three modes of operation... A "field light"
| mode... Direct electron-beam therapy... Megavolt X-ray (or
| photon) therapy, which delivered a beam of 25 MeV X-ray
| photons"
|
| So, still x-ray radiation, but at much higher voltages than
| diagnostic x-rays.
|
| (The accident was indeed overexposure to the electron beam,
| not to the x-rays, but the electron beam was part of the
| process for producing the x-rays in normal operation)
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| What is "chemotherapy radiation"?
| habi wrote:
| _Chemotherapy_ is fighting cancer with drugs, not radiation:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemotherapy
|
| Often, the fight does involve radiation therapy in addition,
| though!
| ck2 wrote:
| I was looking for mobile x-ray truck services when I came across
| this article.
|
| I do wish by now there was some kind of DIY at-home safe
| alternative to x-ray with resolution say better than ultrasound,
| so you could check for fractures in your feet, etc.
|
| Guess we have at least another decade for that, requires a leap
| in technology. But I bet by the end of the century you'll be able
| to do it on your smartphone or whatever people are using by then.
|
| How about some kind of film or sensor that needs minutes of
| particle exposure from a far lesser powerful source? You would
| rest your foot or limb on the film or sensor for a minute. There
| would be a little blur but manageable, maybe corrected digitally?
| hef19898 wrote:
| We had home-use x-rays in 50s. There is a reason we stopped
| having those, there are reasons why medical devices are
| regulated. Promoting home-build stuff is dangerous. Especially
| since non-trained people just don't know what they are looking
| at when looking at x-ray pictures.
| lbriner wrote:
| The imagery equipment is one thing, the other is the skill to
| interpret what you see. Sure, a bad fracture might be obvious
| but there are many very subtle things that are not so easy to
| see or understand. The radiographer will know the equipment but
| will usually have to defer to the Doctor for expert advice.
|
| Mobile equipment does exist, however it is usually used at
| smaller hospitals who don't have the space or money for a
| permanent unit.
| everforward wrote:
| > How about some kind of film or sensor that needs minutes of
| particle exposure from a far lesser powerful source? You would
| rest your foot or limb on the film or sensor for a minute.
| There would be a little blur but manageable, maybe corrected
| digitally?
|
| I think that blur would be problematic for fractures, at least
| for the variety where you aren't sure whether you should go to
| the hospital or not.
|
| More generally speaking, even if we had a safe way to get
| X-rays at home diagnosing them is hard. The "bone is torn in
| half" ones are easy to see, but I don't think you'd even need
| an X-ray to diagnose that. The more subtle breaks are hard to
| pick up on. I googled for fracture X-rays, and on a lot of them
| I can't tell whether there's a fracture or not unless it's
| obviously snapped in 2.
|
| At home X-rays make less sense to me if you're going to have to
| have a radiologist look at it anyways. You might as well go to
| an outpatient imaging place anyways.
| aorloff wrote:
| American medical industry is worried that once the xray is
| taken, you can ship it to another country where a trained
| physician can look at it and diagnose it for $50. The problem
| is that the American doctor needs to make orders of magnitude
| more money to diagnose. Hopefully we will see this kind of
| disintermediation, because for routine stuff (broken bones)
| costs should be way lower than they are.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >because for routine stuff (broken bones) costs should be
| way lower than they are.
|
| Yeah that tends to happen when insurance gets involved in
| routine care.
|
| Not that the doctors don't deserve some credit.
| gxt wrote:
| Fine US lawmakers should have Congress outlaw scalping. Then
| victims of the US medical system would have a novel argument to
| sue goodness into the damn thing.
| Maursault wrote:
| My issue with X-rays is that they are massively overused and
| rarely help the diagnosis. 99.9% (an estimation) of X-rays are
| used to rule out diagnoses. Sprain your wrist? Need an X-ray to
| make sure it's not broken, which your orthopedic already knew.
| Unless there's a broken bone or cancer, all X-rays do is pay for
| the X-ray machine.
|
| Tip: never X-ray your pet (unless there is a broken bone or
| cancer is suspected). Trust me, it is very unlikely to show
| anything. If you're very concerned, go right for the ultrasound,
| which probably also won't show anything. Vets are generally
| awesome individuals, however, veterinary medicine is a business
| for profit quite unlike the health system, and most vet X-rays
| merely serve to pay for and justify the expense of the machine.
| kube-system wrote:
| If that diagnosis is actually being considered, ruling it out
| is a very important function, isn't it?
| q1w2 wrote:
| Humans are far more likely to break bones than pets - so I
| agree that it's almost never worth it to get a pet xray.
|
| For humans though, as someone who's worked in a hospital, xrays
| are extremely useful. We see lots of broken bones. Confirming
| the break is important so that you know to put the patient in a
| cast, but more importantly, the type of break can sometimes
| require surgery to set the bone.
|
| I'm not sure how many xrays rule out a fracture, rather than
| confirm it, but it's not 99.9%. If I had to guesstimate, maybe
| 10-20% of possible fracture xrays confirm a fracture. That
| percentage probably increases greatly as patients age. Kids
| very often come in with sprains that their parents want xrays,
| whereas a lot of elderly people break bones more easily.
| tsol wrote:
| >Need an X-ray to make sure it's not broken, which your
| orthopedic already knew.
|
| Not sure where this assumption is from. A doctor can sometimes
| tell when something is outright broken, but in a lot of cases
| they need to take x-rays to tell if there's a hairline fracture
| or something small that might not present with a lot of pain. X
| rays also tell the actual severity.
| jypepin wrote:
| I just saw someone on tiktok showing how they made their own
| invisiline from a scan of their teeths. They programmed their own
| multi-step adjustment, bought a special 3d printer and printed
| all their invisiline things. Unsure how efficient or comparable
| theirs will be to the right thing, but I found that very
| interesting what a single person can do nowadays!
| starlust2 wrote:
| Invisiline are actually 3D printed. Formlabs markets a printer
| for dental usecases. As long as your models and movement
| calculations are correct they'll work the same, but probably
| not an easy task.
|
| https://dental.formlabs.com/materials/
| lbriner wrote:
| As with all of these things, it depends how much you can
| research what you are doing and what risk you want to take.
|
| When I first had a retainer, they put this hair-thin wire in
| the clips and it didn't make any sense to me, it was so thin,
| it seemed pointless until the next morning when my teeth were
| really sore.
|
| The dentist knew that because they are trained. They know when
| to adjust wires etc. same with invisiline: sure you aren't
| going to die but that doesn't mean you can't do some damage to
| your teeth or jaw.
| adenta wrote:
| Could you send a link? I thought _I_ was cool for just making a
| thermoform mold of my teeth that I've been documenting at
| https://www.tiktok.com/@unofficial_denta.istry
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Note that guy said he had personal connections to an "dental
| mechanic" (mecanico dental, don't know what it's called in
| English). Basically someone professional and licensed to verify
| his molds and steps were correct.
| kube-system wrote:
| > (mecanico dental, don't know what it's called in English)
|
| Dental lab technician?
| teeray wrote:
| DIY orthodontics is interesting but also horrifying if it goes
| wrong (there are pictures, I will not link them)
| drBonkers wrote:
| Do you have a link to that?
| sgjohnson wrote:
| It was not a $69k hospital bill. It was just $2500 for him.
|
| But it sure does make a good headline.
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| Trivializing the cost as "just $2500" speaks more about your
| privilege than it does anything else.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| It has nothing to do with privilege or anything other than
| basic relativity. $2.5k is "just $2.5k" relative to $69k for
| everyone.
| deltaonefour wrote:
| Well where did that 69k number come from? Seems like the person
| at fault here is person that generated that ludicrous number
| that's completely BS.
| datavirtue wrote:
| It wasn't 69k either. That's the troll number the hospitals and
| insurance companies use to shock people and justify the actual
| high prices.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| But when they send you that bill, it is a legally valid debt
| that you owe them.
|
| The fact that you can negotiate large debts _does not change
| that_
| nanoservices wrote:
| Sure... Who is the hospital billing $69k to, the insurance?
| Also $2,500 is still a lot.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| Nobody. Not even the insurance company paid that.
| telchior wrote:
| Not a completely unreasonable headline, considering that an
| uninsured person would get a bill for something probably closer
| to $69k than $2.5k. I've gotten one of those bills before, and
| IMO the insanity of it cannot be pointed out enough times.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| This is true and the system is incredibly wasteful and dumb,
| but to be clear those uninsured people would immediately
| negotiate it down to about $250 by calling and saying "wtf am
| I supposed to do with this bill".
| olyjohn wrote:
| Or they just put you on a payment plan for the rest of your
| life.
| sofixa wrote:
| I wonder what kind of innovations we're missing in the EU with
| our affordable healthcare.
| jaykk wrote:
| the whole title is clickbait. he got insurance.
| squarefoot wrote:
| > the whole title is clickbait. he got insurance.
|
| Those fees are crazy nonetheless.
|
| I don't have any insurance and during the last 1.5 years I
| suffered symptomatic Covid (medicines and vaccines free),
| then a road accident with multiple fractures: left arm, right
| shoulder, both wrists and L4, (nearly 2 months hospitalized
| plus long rehab to learn to walk again: all free excluding
| the fees for printing the medical data, which were over 400
| pages, and MRI/RX/CT images DVDs: around 20 Euros all
| included), then last January I got a heart attack and was
| hospitalized in a coronary care unit for 4 days plus 1 day at
| the ward where I was planted two stents: again all free
| including the 1st bag of medicines.
|
| 20 years ago I worked in the IT, pays were very good and
| therefore taxes were high, but all considered, in the end I
| got a lot more than I paid for. I could think of a thousand
| things I don't like at all about my country, but healthcare
| is definitely not one of them.
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| I think my post major car accident care (x-rays, ct,
| ambulance ride - had concussion) 10 years ago cost me $100
| all said and done on my parents' kaiser plan in California.
|
| When I walked into a kaiser urgent care last year for
| serious back pain I had chest X-rays and a CT and I paid
| $20.
|
| The major issue is that you only get that kind of
| healthcare working for a decent company (and using an HMO
| plan). Not everyone has the access and that's the issue.
| dekhn wrote:
| IMHO kaiser is amazing. they have a different incentive
| from typical for-profit medical companies.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Your healthcare cost a lot more than the 20 euros or "free"
| that you said. In the US it's a bit more transparent since
| you're receiving the bill. In a shared public healthcare
| system everyone foots the bill via their taxes. I'm sure
| hospitals make out more in the US -- the entire system is
| designed to create profit at every stage - but saying
| things are "free" elsewhere is disingenuous.
|
| He also built an x-ray machine, but his charges per the
| article were for a CT scan and staying at the hospital. A
| CT scan is a totally different beast than an x-ray machine,
| and staying at the hospital means you're actively under
| medical care the entire time. It's all very clickbaity.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| The US spends the most per-capita on healthcare in the
| world.
| TomK32 wrote:
| It does, but not very efficiently:
| https://www.uclahealth.org/u-magazine/u-s-ranks-near-
| bottom-...
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| Some days I wonder if we're subsidizing Europe's
| healthcare in a way.
|
| European counties impose stringent controls on how much
| money their public health system will pay for something
| and in response, since said company still wants that
| money, it ends up jacking up rates in the US.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| We certainly are. But I think global healthcare spend
| would still decrease if the US were to adopt strict price
| controls a la Europe. Of course, Europe will need to pay
| a bit more towards healthcare but the burden on the
| states would be much decreased.
|
| I don't imagine it would come anywhere close to the cost
| we currently pay for services here though.
|
| It's the same as university here in the states. If
| colleges know that students are walking in with a minimum
| of $45k, guaranteed from the federal government, why
| wouldn't a university charge anything less than that for
| a degree?
| TomK32 wrote:
| You mean because a large chunk for R&D in medicine is
| done in the USA? Maybe that is because in the USA pharma
| companies can go mental about pricing their products, who
| wouldn't want such a lucrative market that's easy to
| exploit thanks to a well-oiled lobby machinery? I highly
| doubt that pharma companies would stop their R&D if the
| USA was to introduce universal healthcare for everyone of
| its citizens.
| [deleted]
| sofixa wrote:
| > Luckily, Osman's insurance covered most of the bill, but
| that still left him on the hook for $2,500.
|
| That's still far more than you'd pay for most healthcare
| related things across the EU.
| lbriner wrote:
| The problem is that the cost for healthcare is hidden. In
| the UK, we have "National Insurance" but it doesn't work
| like normal insurance. It goes into the same big pot as
| everything else and gets spent on whatever.
|
| It is a hard balance but sometimes when I see people doing
| stupid things that land them in the ER, I kind of wish that
| their premium would increase as a result. That said, I
| think the largest cost in healthcare is the care of the
| elderly: We somehow keep people breathing for much longer
| than 50 years ago but it doesn't stop their bodies needing
| some big maintenance or long-term residential care.
| kube-system wrote:
| Health insurance premiums in the US don't raise people
| rates if they do stupid stuff, with the single exception
| of smoking. Rates are basically set based on three
| factors: age, location, and smoking status. You do share
| costs if there's an accident, but daredevils and school
| teachers get the same rate at the same age in the same
| city.
| floor2 wrote:
| So about 3-4 days of work as an entry-level Facebook
| developer, or 3-3.5 weeks of work at a McDonalds (based on
| every fast-food place around me having billboards up
| offering starting wages of $18-20/hr).
|
| Getting access to emergency life-saving treatment, which
| leverages billions of dollars in research & development and
| hours of work from a team of doctors, radiologists, nurses,
| pharmacists, support staff, etc in exchange for being asked
| to contribute back to society by cooking burgers for a
| month feels like a pretty amazing offer compared to how
| almost all humans have existed in history and most still do
| around the world today.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| Since the typical fast food service worker see almost
| their entire paycheck go to living expenses before any
| opportunity for luxuries or savings, that does indeed
| sound like a crippling if not insurmountable financial
| burden for someone who incurs an x-ray expense like this
| unexpectedly. Especially since whatever reason they have
| for needing an x-ray could affect their ability to earn
| income from McDonalds. I don't think hourly wage work
| offers the same perks as entry-level development roles at
| facebook with regards to paid sick leave.
| roywiggins wrote:
| > 3-3.5 weeks of work at a McDonalds
|
| Sure, if you don't pay for rent, food, or transportation
| to work.
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| Alas, still no cure for Stockholm Syndrome.
| buescher wrote:
| This example is totally unrealistic. In the USA someone
| supporting themselves working at McDonalds would qualify
| for Medicaid and have essentially no out-of-pocket
| medical expenses.
| cjrp wrote:
| > 3-3.5 weeks of work at a McDonalds
|
| With a broken limb (which is presumably why you required
| the X-ray in the first place)?
| ljp_206 wrote:
| The fact that we have better health infrastructure in
| most places worldwide than ever before in human history
| is true. But saying a surprise, out-of-the-blue 2.5k
| medical bill can be taken care of by working nearly a
| month at McDonalds without factoring the high cut of that
| wage that goes to living is facile at best and cruel at
| worst.
| db48x wrote:
| True, but it's also more complex than that. I don't know
| the story here, but the $69k bill sounds like he went to a
| hospital to get treated.
|
| Hospital prices in the US are always lies; his insurance
| company probably paid around $10k in total and perhaps even
| less than that. Of course the insurance company doesn't
| generally tell their customers exactly how much they
| actually paid the hospital. He could have gotten a more
| reasonable bill by asking the hospital for the cash price
| for everything, writing them a check for that amount, and
| then getting reimbursed by his insurance company. It might
| still have been more than his out-of-pocket limit, in which
| case he still would have paid the $2,500.
|
| But his real mistake was probably going to the hospital in
| the first place. He probably should have gone to his
| Primary Care Physician or to an Urgent Care Clinic. Either
| one of them can admit him to a hospital if it turns out to
| be necessary, but it probably would not have been. I see in
| another comment that he needed an X-Ray, a CT scan, and
| some medication. He could have gotten all of that at an
| urgent care clinic for $1,000 or so, and slept in his own
| bed that night.
|
| It pays to shop around, and you can do so _before_ you get
| hurt.
|
| Finally, don't forget that in addition to the $2,500 he
| paid, he also paid his insurance company even in years that
| he wasn't injured or ill. Likewise, you pay taxes every
| year and part of that goes to pay for healthcare, even if
| you aren't actually injured or ill.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| $10k is still a ridiculous amount.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| I was just in the ER in SouthWest Florida: $12K for two
| CT-scans and blood tests over two days, basically to
| check if I was having appendicitis (I did not- probably
| infection from prior kidney stone). No overnight stay,
| but two visits over two days. $12K is the initial bill to
| my insurance company, so not sure what they will actually
| receive.
| yazaddaruvala wrote:
| I had a similar ER visit for "possible appendicitis". It
| turned out to be a sprained psoas.
|
| I've since had it again, but was more aware of what to
| feel for and didn't seek out the ER. Might be worth it to
| keep in mind if you have something similar again.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psoas_major_muscle
| db48x wrote:
| I agree. That's why most of the time you shouldn't visit
| a hospital; you can get the same work done elsewhere for
| much less money.
| its_ethan wrote:
| So how much should it cost? And how do you arrive at that
| number?
| fesoliveira wrote:
| In Brazil an x-ray exam will cost you no more than 90
| BRL, or less than 20 USD in todays rate. And this is out
| of the pocket, without insurance. If a 3rd world country
| can have affordable healthcare, why should having minor
| health complications be synonym to bankruptcy in the
| richest country in the world?
| db48x wrote:
| I live in one of the highest-priced areas of the US, and
| a simple x-ray exam costs about $200 whether you have
| insurance or not. The difference in price is primarily
| due to the higher cost of living here than in Brazil; the
| tech who takes the x-ray and the doctor who looks at it
| to diagnose the problem get paid more here than there. I
| should know; I got hit by a car last year and sprained my
| thumb when I hit the ground. The x-ray was to check that
| the thumb was only sprained, and not broken.
|
| But if you go to a hospital to get the same thing you
| will pay 10x as much or more. You'll also have to wait a
| lot longer, as anyone with a more serious complaint will
| get prioritized ahead of you. Both of these are reasons
| why people should not generally visit the hospital,
| unless they have a problem which is immediately life-
| threatening, or they are admitted to the hospital by
| their primary-care physician.
|
| > why should having minor health complications be synonym
| to bankruptcy in the richest country in the world?
|
| It's not. For all of the problems that our health-care
| system may or may not have, people don't go bankrupt
| because they needed an x-ray.
| kube-system wrote:
| There is no good reason the US can't bring down
| healthcare costs, but there are also some not so good
| reasons that some countries have very cheap healthcare.
| its_ethan wrote:
| Genuine question, how are you so confident that reducing
| prices from current levels wouldn't cause unintended
| consequences like causing innovation to stifle, hiring to
| become more difficult, or health infrastructure to
| degrade? You can point to other countries having lower
| prices, sure, but just like you said - there are plenty
| of reasons why other countries can be cheaper than in the
| US.
| kube-system wrote:
| Because we have inefficiencies that are baked into the
| status quo. Insurers, for example, provide little value
| to health outcomes. Their purpose is purely financial,
| and there are much more simple ways to shift that money
| around that requires less administrative overhead, and
| allows prices to be set by better methods than threats by
| insurers, which is basically how they're set now.
| phkahler wrote:
| It should not cost more than a pair of shoes. They used
| to use x-rays to check fit at the shoe stores - for free.
| its_ethan wrote:
| You mean back in the 1930s when you stuck your foot in a
| _wooden_ box with an open X-ray tube and got yourself and
| nearby customers exposed to radiation at a significantly
| higher dose than even a full torso x-ray in modern times?
| Okay, my guy...
| marcodiego wrote:
| Your own x-ray machine... This is on my list of "do not try this
| at home".
| candiodari wrote:
| Why not do tomography instead? Uses infrared radiation mostly, so
| it's less harmful than looking at a fire.
| habi wrote:
| Classic tomography does _not_ necessarily use IR light. One
| needs radiation that penetrates the object to be imaged, hence
| X-rays.
| TomK32 wrote:
| He just could move to Canada or Europe and avoid insane hospital
| bills. Just saying.
| jedimastert wrote:
| > He just could move to Canada or Europe
|
| You know it consistently baffled me that someone can look at a
| person who struggles to pay a hospital bill and think that
| moving to a different country is a viable option.
| 28uwedj wrote:
| When the moving cost is 1/100th of the hospital bill. really?
| this baffles you? it's an investment.
| txcan wrote:
| And wait for 100 years to get their free X-ray done in Canada ?
| TillE wrote:
| I got an MRI (way more complicated than an x-ray) done in
| Berlin in about a week, for no charge, on public health
| insurance.
|
| But sure, defend an objectively insane system because it's
| what you're used to.
| fesoliveira wrote:
| I don't know where did you get such information, but it takes
| a few days of wait at most in Canada to get an X-ray.
| deltaonefour wrote:
| I'm weirded out by the number of people on HN defending the
| US medical system. As someone living in the US mayself,
| everyone is well aware how crazy the medical system is, but
| in this thread there's a large number of people trying to
| justify 69k for an "expert" pushing a button to zap you with
| rays.
| kube-system wrote:
| It's a system that needs some changes, but also, the bill
| wasn't for an x-ray and nobody paid $69k.
| deltaoneseven wrote:
| The first thing wrong with the system is that number.
| 69k. Even if nobody paid 69k. Who made up that BS number
| and for what insidious purpose?
| kartoolOz wrote:
| Single X-ray session costs 4$ in my state in India
| hackmiester wrote:
| Yes, but unfortunately modern medical billing practices have
| not yet come to Osman's home country.
| brezelgoring wrote:
| He's American, it probably costs him thousands just to book it.
|
| I'm from a third world hellhole and it costs me just 8 bucks to
| do it.
| [deleted]
| mcntsh wrote:
| For anyone layman who wants to mess around with radioactive
| technology, I recommend reading about the "Goiania accident"[1]
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Comparing screwing around with dental xray equipment (or any
| x-ray equipment really) to distributing the radioactive bits of
| chemotherapy equipment across a neighborhood is like saying "be
| careful, you wouldn't want to accidentally blow up a government
| office building" every time someone starts talking about plant
| fertilizer or lecturing someone who's installing 12v car audio
| about transformer substation safety practices. The magnitude
| difference between the subjects is so big it constitutes a
| qualitative difference even if there is a common element.
|
| Not every discussion about something in the physical world
| needs to start with a low effort comment about how you can die
| by cranking it to 11 and then abusing it.
| ultimape wrote:
| In the context of buying used hospital equipment and the
| concerns of a layman making a mistake due to the very
| confusion you highlight... Seems at least relevant.
| WinterMount223 wrote:
| An x ray lamp is not radioactive unless you are eating bananas.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Anyone who thinks these are comparable should withhold
| judgement until they learn more about how different kinds of
| "radiation" work. It's an overloaded term.
|
| X-rays generated by slamming accelerated electrons into a metal
| plate turn off immediately once power is removed. There is no
| residual radioactive decay, because there were no unstable or
| decaying isotopes at any point in the process. It's not a
| nuclear process. It does not involve the nucleus.
|
| In contrast, the Goiania accident was the result of beta
| radiation from a pile of decaying Cesium 137 that could only be
| contained, not turned off.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| X-Rays are not "radioactive technology", they are application
| of high energy particle physics.
|
| Please don't spread around misinformation.
|
| Once the power is off, there is no more radiation from the
| internals of an X-Ray Machine.
|
| Heck, we have portable X-Ray dental cameras now.
|
| They are still dangerous, but orders of magnitude lesser than
| true radioactive elements.
| kashunstva wrote:
| I don't understand the connection between the cost of
| hospitalization and a DIY 2d x-ray machine. Where exactly do you
| go with that? The article states that he underwent an abdominal
| CT, but of course that's not what he built. Probably a good
| thing, too, as whatever radiation he's emitting would have been
| substantially higher. I'm just confused about the motivation.
| There are lots of costs embedded in procedure pricing - some
| legitimate, some less so. Heaven forbid he goes into hospital and
| has to have an MRI. I can't imagine the monstrosity that would
| result from that DIY project.
| dekhn wrote:
| You are right to question the narrative. These days it's common
| for news articles to play this kind of trick. There are just a
| lot of hidden costs the DIY youtuber is ignoring.
| deltaonefour wrote:
| He's right to question the narrative but absolutely insane
| not to question the 69k cost.
|
| That xray is not worth 69k. It's a literal crime that the
| hospital charges that much.
| dekhn wrote:
| have you run a major medical center? Acquired an x-ray
| machine? Operated it (and paid the staff) for 10 years?
|
| if you haven't done that, I'm not sure you have the
| experience to say how much an x-ray should cost.
| wbear wrote:
| you're right about the hidden costs not mentioned in the
| article. He stayed at the hospital for 2 days, consulted
| with doctors, and received medication. this is why the
| bill is so high.
|
| however, an x-ray should cost around $200. there's no
| need for an "expert" medical billing administrator here,
| $200 is double or triple the price of an x-ray in many
| european countries, and many facilities in america (where
| the youtuber lives) will charge less than $1000.
| deltaoneseven wrote:
| I know dog shit isn't worth 69k and nobody needs to
| acquire a dog shit maker, and operate a dog shit maker
| nor pay for the staff making a dog shit maker to know
| that dog shit isn't worth 69k. Basic common sense.
|
| Maybe the above is a bad analogy. Put it this way.
|
| I've been to hospitals outside of the US and paid for
| x-ray services. That's how I know. That's how Everyone
| knows ...
|
| 69k a crime.
|
| What I don't understand is why there exists someone
| defending something so obvious. Are you an X-ray
| operator?
| lbriner wrote:
| It just sounds to me like a good story to introduce the
| project. I suppose he is kind of saying "how can they charge
| this much when I can build one of these at home".
| tsol wrote:
| Yeah it seems like an excuse to do the project. X-rays aren't
| all that expensive, usually under $100. Maybe with a reading
| by a radiologist it can go into the hundreds
| buescher wrote:
| There's an irony in the breathless "built his very own x-ray
| machine" slant - x-rays are literally Victorian technology. Not
| for the reckless or uninitiated I suppose, but I remember books
| showing how to make x-ray devices from the wrong vacuum tubes and
| spark coils and such. Probably by Alfred Morgan but I can't find
| the reference now. Don't try any of this today, only bad things
| will happen, right?
|
| To quote the more contemporary source below "Any person who
| regularly works with any combination of high voltage and vacuum
| should maintain a dosimetry program."
|
| http://www.belljar.net/xray.htm
|
| http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_fair_projec...
| Jeema101 wrote:
| Yea exactly. Anyone with experience with electronics who is
| willing to work with high voltage and has some knowledge of
| vacuum tubes could probably make one.
|
| Side note: old TV rectifier tubes from the 1950s and 60s were
| notoriously known for being x ray emitters, and were often made
| with leaded glass or kept inside shielded enclosures
| specifically because of the X-rays. So X-ray emitters were
| literally in everyday standard consumer electronics back then!
| Kind of crazy to think about these days...
| willis936 wrote:
| And the TVs themselves were three particle accelerators
| steered by magnetic coils slamming voltage rails of a few kV
| 15,750 times a second. The beams emitted X-Ray
| Bremsstrahlung. In everyone's home.
|
| The last truly cool piece of physics in the house today is
| the magnetron, which is pretty damn cool.
| dekhn wrote:
| My kitchen microwave kills any 2.4ghz wifi within 30 feet.
| buescher wrote:
| Exactly, indeed. One of the links I gave shows how to use a
| 6BK4B rectifier tube for the purpose. No special X-ray tube
| or glasswork required. Most of the high voltage parts can be
| scavenged from old color tvs or monitors. Remember, though,
| only bad things will happen and the inside of a color tv is
| not a place of honor, no great deed is commemorated there,
| nothing of value is stored there...
|
| Edit: that might sound tongue-in-cheek but please take it as
| hahah, only serious. You can hurt yourself with these things,
| you probably don't have a good reason to be experimenting
| with them, and if you do need to learn how to work with high
| voltage or ionizing radiation safely, this is not the place
| and I am not teaching you.
| teeray wrote:
| Makes you wonder if that's where the whole "don't sit too
| close to the TV" thing came from
| karmicthreat wrote:
| Kreosan also did something similar and far less safely.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shV2qoZShV0
| Spivak wrote:
| I pay cash for a lot of my medical care thanks to my HSA and this
| is exorbitant but but not insane assuming it's about 2x thanks to
| the insurance premium which you would never pay yourself. The
| subject is sweeping under the rug the two nights in the hospital
| which is for sure the bulk of the cost -- two days in the
| hospital is expensive as hell. Lots of hospitals bill by the half
| hour and an 8 hour overnight is about $10k when paying cash.
| msandford wrote:
| I can't figure out in what way $1000/hr is tethered to any kind
| of reality. The bed and room don't cost that much. Nursing
| doesn't come close. The doctors tend to bill you separately for
| their services.
|
| I get that isn't the game here. But most games are based on
| some kind of reality. This one seems completely disconnected.
| [deleted]
| gaze wrote:
| It isn't. It's totally and completely arbitrary. It's a
| classic example of "priced what the market will bear."
| yardie wrote:
| Your $1000/hr bill is really covering 5 other indigent
| hospital patients who can't financially cover the care the
| hospital is legally required to give. Rather than design a
| medical system that works for everyone no matter their
| finances we'd rather stick it to the middle class (the rich
| go to very different hospitals) since they have the most to
| lose and are the weakest to negotiate.
|
| Also, socialism.
| qgin wrote:
| The rich go to very different hospitals?
| yardie wrote:
| Yes, in my city there is a trauma 1, a few trauma 3s, and
| multiple hospitals who have no ER at all. T1 is downtown,
| surrounded by homeless encampments, and is perpetually
| broke. By city charter T1 cannot file for bankruptcy
| protection and cannot turn away anyone seeking emergency
| treatment. T3 and outpatient hospitals are in rich
| suburbs, no homeless camps, and the parking lot is full
| of luxury cars. They also cannot do most emergency
| services and will send you to T1.
|
| The overnight stay in the T1 is $10k for a grimey room
| while the T3s are closer to $3k-5k before insurance. I've
| volunteered at both types and it is night and day
| difference in the staff and the patients.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| There's a Voyager episode about this.
| fatnoah wrote:
| My roommate's bill for my own 5 day, $24k hospital stay was
| $0. My after-insurance cost was $2k, though I negotiated
| that down to $800 that I was able to pay off over a year
| (grad student on a stipend). Initially I was a little
| bitter about my roommate getting a freebie due to lack of
| insurance, but I eventually learned some compassion. In his
| case, he was unemployed and couldn't work due to a back
| injury.
|
| So, we end up in this situation where those who have
| insurance subsidize those who don't. Many people who are ok
| with this are very much against an identical arrangement
| where the government is involved.
| greenonions wrote:
| It's because it's the cash price. Medicare and Medicaid
| reimbursements are significantly less, so in order to make
| budgets make any sense, the bills that can be increased,
| increase enough to cover all of the others.
|
| Even employer sponsored insurance will get significant
| discounts on that price.
| dboreham wrote:
| They're protecting us from socialism.
| LanceH wrote:
| Medical care is equally far from capitalism.
| jandrese wrote:
| Depends if you are going with the book definition of
| capitalism or just "more money for rich people".
| cfcosta wrote:
| And that's why you don't get your term definitions from
| people that don't understand it.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiJAq53knwc
|
| The link to the video.
| cmckn wrote:
| I can't get past the paywall on the article, but how exactly did
| he get a bill for an X-ray that totaled $69,000? Much more
| advanced diagnostics, like CT scans, MRI's, etc. cost a tenth of
| this.
|
| edit: quick google says a full-body X-ray should run you
| somewhere around $1,100 without insurance:
| https://health.costhelper.com/x-rays.html
| db48x wrote:
| Apparently it was an x-ray, a CT scan, some medication, and two
| nights in a hospital bed. That's the real problem. Hospitals
| are great if you have been in a car accident and could die at
| any moment, but terrible for anything else.
|
| In particular, hospitals in the US are well-known for lying
| about their prices. You'll get a bill for some ridiculous
| amount, and your insurance will negotiate it down to something
| more reasonable. Of course they don't negotiate prices on a
| case-by-case basis; instead the large insurance companies
| negotiate "bulk discounts" ahead of time. It is unlikely that
| his insurance paid more than $10k. Ironically he probably could
| have paid even less if he had asked for the cash prices at the
| hospital, and then gotten reimbursed by his insurance.
|
| But even that is too much. If he had gone to his primary-care
| physician or an urgent-care clinic he probably would have paid
| a tenth of that or less, plus he could have slept in his own
| bed.
| emkoemko wrote:
| why are hospitals charging money?
| tinybrotosaurus wrote:
| Because they provide a service?
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