Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano and the early co-founder of Ethereum, says the US health system is not broken-it works exactly as the design. And that, he says, is the problem.
“The health care system is just fucked in America. It’s just fucked. Everyone knows it’s true,” Hoskinson said in an interview with Coindesk TV at the rare EVO conference in Las Vegas. “Still, they all try to keep getting the system going because it’s just too profitable.”
While that may sound like harsh criticism, Hoskinson puts his money where his mouth is: He pours $ 200 million investment in a medical center in Gillette, Wyoming, now earning about a third of the city’s population.
His vision for his investment of several million dollars? “If they can’t pay, don’t charge them,” he said.
The ‘horrible’ problem
So what are the most important problems with the current health system that caused him to pour millions into a new type of system? According to Hoskinson, this is how doctors are paid.
“All the financial incentives are just terrible and wrong in healthcare,” he told Coindesk TV using an example of how doctors are incentive to treat their patients anyway, regardless of their needs.
“Let’s say you’re 75 years old and you have lots of cool morbids and you just don’t feel good … Your doctor gets the exact same amount to see you … Since he or she will be paid to go and see a 16-year-old girl come in for a UTI and just need five minutes and some antibiotics.”
The economic structure, he said, discourages coordination, conversation and long -term planning. “They have every incentive to keep you as sick as possible as long as possible because they have developed chronic treatments for all these things,” Hoskinson claimed.
And what is the source that built his scornful allegations of health care? “Because my father is a doctor, my brother is a doctor. Grandpa was a doctor, Uncle is a doctor,” Hoskinson said
The patient -centric resolution
To solve this, Hoskinson suggests building a facility centered around the patient, not billing codes or bureaucracies and using advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain.
“Let’s build a clinic where we put the patient at the center. We build a care team, we use AI and we do everything we can to try to just make it a patient -centered care that is affordable.”
AI, for this new system, will be used to support – not replace – the doctors. “Every day it can dress in the whole of all medical knowledge, and you can have agents representing every specialty in medicine … and providing an updated care plan at the beginning of the day to the provider.”
The system, he said, can capture “subtle signals in the patient’s history” and help with real -time revision. He also described plans for AI tools that can mark interactions for drug-to-medicament, transcribe patient visits and eventually act as an “AI joint case” to help people interpret food labels, medicine and supplements.
The architecture of the project can also involve blockchain.
Hoskinson referred to selective reveal and zero-knowledge-technology-cryptographic tools that can verify facts (as age or citizenship) Without exposing underlying personal details. “You can satisfy the intention and philosophy of these buckets without revealing the underlying customer,” he said.
He also plans to open source the entire model-inclusive protocols and software to allow replication elsewhere. “We’re not here to make money [it]”Said Hoskinson.” The goal is to open them, the open source software you know get that care system out there. “
He also pushes on a wider reset of the policy. “Health insurance must be the same as you buy it if you get really sick,” Hoskinson said. “It makes no sense to say, yes, it’s there when you get a paper cut or there for when you want to get birth control or something.”
However, Hoskinson claims that this new model of healthcare is facing pushback from the traditional medical system.
“The hospital is trying to kill us,” he claims.
“They do everything that is in their power to make our lives miserable. Uh, they will not be credentialed. So it takes six months to 12 months to get credentials to get them to practice medicine. I bring a world -famous surgeon and a famous transplant surgeon. They will not give them credentials,” Hoskinson said.
While Hoskinson’s struggle to restore health care may be a David versus Goliath scenario, he sees this as part of his and his family’s heritage. “I put $ 200 million of my own money at my clinic and we’ve been building in the last three years and I will legitimately solve this problem,” he said.
“I think it’s my inheritance and it’s the family’s legacy, and that’s the most important thing in America too.”
