Featured below is a highly critical look at Theranos, the controversial health technology company eulogised by the denizens of Silicon Valley, and its youthful founder, Elizabeth Holmes, published by the YouTube channel ColdFusion. The scandal ensuing from the rise and fall of the Californian business, which essentially existed in a financial bubble based upon its theoretical or predicted value rather than any income it was accruing through its own products or services (some $10 billion at its height), is emblematic in many ways of the culture of the American tech-entrepreneur class. Though in this case it is coupled with hefty doses of deliberate fraud and deceit on behalf of Holmes and her acolytes.
Elizabeth Holmes And The Theranos Scandal
AN SIONNACH FIONN 
Reblogged this on da Zêna.
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Since I work for an employer that deals closely with Medicare and Medicaid, I have found that the system (both state run and private insurance) is in a bit of a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation with “hot new medical technologies”.
If the system argues for a more rigorous cautious approach to deciding to pay for new drugs, or new medical technologies, and/or say “no” or at least “no until we have better evidence” then we are a sluggish, conservative, bureaucratic pack of “Good Ol’ Boys” who are living in another time and are denying medical care to people who can’t afford to pay out of pocket. If we argue for a more expedited process for opting to pay form something and/or say “yes” to something that either proves not to be worth the money or worse has risks that end up killing people, then we are just a whore for big money and a handmaiden of the pharmaceutical and medical tech companies.
Of course, the Theranos case had never even gotten close to the point where Medicare had to make a decision. The vast majority involve things like new drugs for things like autoimmune conditions.
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