Ask HN: group project for HN or if anyone wants to run with it

bbg · on Sept 26, 2009

I don't think I'll run with this; it looks to be a mess.

But after a good 25 minutes of research, including a perusal of an AARP guide to the process, whose URL is at the bottom of this post (or Google "drug names medicare plans"), the relevant variables seem to be these:

1. geographical location (zip code)

2. each drug in the person's drug list

   a.  dosage -- frequency and amount

   b.  generic available?

   c.  lower cost brand-name drug of same therapeutic value available?

3. the pharmacy of choice

   a.  local pharmacy

   b.  mail-order pharmacy

4. Payments

   a.  annual deductible

   b.  monthly drug premium

   c.  how much your drug copays cost at four different levels of coverage:

      i.  before deductible is met

      ii.  after deductible is met, but before limit of $2700 is reached (beginning of doughnut hole)

      iii.  in doughnut hole, when recipient pays 100% of costs

      iv.  after catastrophic stage is reached ($4350, end of doughnut hole), and government/plan again helps out.

5. The plans

   a.  plan ratings (how good customer service is, based on customer feedback, etc.)

   b.  tiers, ranging from lowest copay (1) to highest copay (4 or 5).  Each drug falls into a particular tier; some drugs may have alternatives in cheaper tiers.  Some plans don't use tiers.

   c.  restrictions on certain drugs

I would be willing to bet that someone who actually understands this process would want to qualify or correct some or all of what I've written.

From what I can tell, the question is often not 'does plan a cover drug z', but rather 'given that I'm taking drugs w, x, y and z, will my costs be lowest with plan a, b or c.' This is precisely the sort of computation that software should help out with, but, as I said above, it looks messy. Also, if you dispense inaccurate information, you could really be inflicting harm on someone.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&...

fauxfauxpas · on Sept 26, 2009

Might try looking at medicare.gov and their formulary plan finder - it has a lot of that information. Also look at kff.org - lots of good Medicare/Medicaid info and they have done studies on the drug formularies, etc.

CraigBuchek · on Sept 26, 2009

Sounds like a good idea. I know that there are several non-profit organizations out there that help people apply for free medications. Basically, each pharmaceutical company offers free medications for those in need (partly due to government incentives), but you have to go to each company to apply. So the non-profits help you find the right forms and fill them out. The one I've worked with is http://freemedicine.com/.

callmeed · on Sept 26, 2009

Why not just setup a wiki for this and start spreading the word?

Or are you wanting to do some screen-scraping of pharma websites?

brandnewlow · on Sept 26, 2009

Keeping a wiki full of links to medical resource free of spam sounds like a nightmare to me.

rarrrrrr · on Sept 26, 2009

I think you could solve quite a bit of it just by writing your own CAPTCHA (instead of using a public one that there's already exploit code for.) There's a PyGimp script you can tweak here:

https://spideroak.com/code

Won't stop the people who proxy your CAPTCHA on another site, but the people doing that probably have more valuable targets.

camccann · on Sept 26, 2009

Given the stuff that ends up in my spam buckets, I'd tend to expect that anything involving medication or health care is one of the "more valuable targets", at least from the set of things that have CAPTCHAs as a significant obstacle.

conoryoung · on Sept 26, 2009

The target demographic is not exactly rolling in cash but an interesting, socially conscious idea nevertheless.

edw519 · on Sept 26, 2009

The target demographic is not exactly rolling in cash...

Not necessarily. I know a lot of millionaires on medicare. I've always wondered about that until I realized that that's exactly how many people became millionaires: by taking advantage of every financial opportunity.

Also, don't forget that in the incestuous healthcare market, there's is lots of cash. You can do very well even if your consumer isn't the one paying.

I don't fully understand the requirement here, but if it scratches a big enough itch, there's probably a great opportunity, financial and otherwise.

earl · on Sept 26, 2009

so -- the idea is to take some big list of drugs that a person requires and compute the lowest cost supplemental insurer?

I have a couple questions.

1 While the social utility of this is obvious, how do you support the (very likely) large amount of hand tuned scraping required to do this? I'm really curious if anybody has any ideas.

2 How do you prevent yourself from getting financially ruined by insurance companies suing you for whatever reason they dream up? It hardly matters if they have a case when they have inhouse counsel and you don't. But you have to imagine that the losers here are going to end up pissed off.