Engineering Your Way To Marketing Success - <AUTHOR> http://www.kalzumeus.com/2009/12/31/engineering-your-way-to-marketing-success/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is largely inspired from a conversation tptacek and I had at his offices earlier in the break. (His company is like two blocks from my dentist. Small world!)

The thesis is, essentially, that you'd get much higher ROI if you redirected engineering assets from building marginal features to supporting your marketing endeavors. For concrete suggestions as to how to do that, see the article.

<comment><USER2> My only question at this point is - why bingo cards?

You have a marketing and SEO platform that's clearly optimized to heck at this point, yet it's returning $30k/yr on $45k. There are content businesses I have personal contact with turning over $45k/day based on SEO.

So, why stick with bingo cards? Are you just comfortable with it? Is the software not easy to expand outwards to other niches? Do you not know of any other niches to hit? Do you think you haven't reached diminishing returns in the bingo card market?

/devils-advocate

<comment><AUTHOR> My biggest reason is that it takes me very little work to continue doing what I'm doing and a whole lot of work to start a new business. It is not feasible for me to do a whole lot of work while full-time employed as a Japanese salaryman.

Give me another couple of months, though, and I'll hopefully have another iron in the fire as well.

It is unlikely that I'm going to do something adjacent to bingo cards for my next thing. It is also unlikely that I'd go into the richest affiliate markets, which is where I'm assuming your buddies are if they're doing $45k a day. (The richest markets are high competition, high stress, and also tend to be highly concentrated in fields where I would not like to make a living. For example, as a consequence of running a squeaky clean website in bingo, I rank fairly well and have been offered impressive sums of money to be less than squeaky clean. I don't want to promote gambling -- ever. That isn't even a moral thing with me, since I'm fine with gambling in moderation -- I'd just much prefer to be the software guy at $45k a year than the gambling tycoon at $4.5 million a year.)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for taking the time to answer :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> "I did this by repurposing the same content I use for my website and slotting it into a landing page template, which gives me about 750 distinct landing pages to work with."

How do you get any statistically significant sampling with this many landing pages. Doesn't this put your required traffic to get a statistically significant result at somewhere around a few hundred thousand page views?

</comment><comment><USER4> I love this post because it mentions me!#!

Patrick offered to come by and grab a drink with me; instead, me and 'cscott bought him a cheap cup of coffee, led him into our cramped meeting room, shut the door, and interrogated him for three hours. It our cheapest, highest-ROI consulting session ever.

I want to get a couple refinements from that conversation onto the thread here:

* At Matasano, the revelation we had in the last couple weeks has been: we have a surplus of engineering cycles and a deficit of marketing effectiveness; it's time to find ways to reallocate. This _doesn't_ mean hiring/contracting marketing. It means finding ways for engineers to improve marketing outcomes.

* Too many software people have an overly narrow definition of what "marketing" is. To them, marketing is promotion, search marketing, conversion tracking, requirements documents. This leads you down a path of bucketing marketing objectives: "ok, so we'll have an engineer set up adwords", or "ok, so we'll have an engineer improve analytics", or "ok, so we'll have an engineer staff a trade show booth".

Marketing is product definition, awareness, lead gen, conversion, and then the measurement and improvement of same. If we're smart enough to define and execute features in products to make our customers lives better, we're smart enough to come up with clever ways to improve awareness and lead gen.

I don't know what Patrick's doing, but we're trying to come up with better ways to engage with our target customers using software engineering cycles; this may include open source, it may include some interesting free web apps, it may include some targeted content generation. Almost none of it fits into a preexisting shrink-wrap "marketing" packet.

* I cannot possibly vouch more strongly for Patrick's thoughts about content generation and long-tail search marketing.

Patrick has a reasonable case to make for being a world expert on computer bingo card topics. We have an even stronger case for being the right people to write pages about how to firewall different applications; we're domain experts first and developers second. And we are the wrong people to write this content.

Some facts about content generation: (1) even at a high level of quality, it's cheaper than a half-hour of your time; (2) 1-2 people cannot maintain a high level of quality for weeks at a time without burning out; (3) however strong your domain knowledge is, there's a huge benefit in diversifying your sources, since they'll have different strengths; and (4) if your processes and tech are good, you can distill excellent content out of adequate raw material.

We have done a _decidedly_ half-hearted job of content-based search marketing, and it has already crushed anything we've gotten with search ads.

* A specific example of "force-multiplying" marketing-engineering, in case you haven't read Patrick's other posts: if you're doing it right, a single piece of content should be many many different pages in your site; the new unit of content is just one parameter among many that makes up a page. For us, the parameters so far are "firewall vendor", "network application", which gets us a 4-5x multiplier on any piece of content. But there are other parameters we can add to improve that down the road.

* I am, for the fleeting time being, sold on the idea that everyone should just write their own CMS (just start with Rails or Django hello-world with a static site and go from there). There are a bunch of things that we were/are able to execute quickly on our custom CMS that we'd have a much harder time doing in a pre-built CMS:

\--* Editorial workflow on parameterized user-generated content

\--* Fire-and-forget captioned screencast pages

\--* Screenshots! I mean, W-T-F: our static site has product screenshots with captions done in Photoshop, meaning we had to actually fire up Photoshop to make new screenshots. The current site we just upload a PNG and click spots on the image and type in a caption, and a tiny amount of JS and CSS makes it look identical.

* Which I guess leads me to the one point from our conversation that Patrick didn't capture, which is: a lot of execution stuff is about friction. For instance: editing a screenshot requires opening up Photoshop, so we're disinclined to change our screenshots or add new ones. Engineering is a great way to take an isolated piece of friction and eliminate it. When you get rid of friction, you execute better. Writing a solid page about firewalling Citrix on a Cisco PIX ASA firewall was a multi-hour task. We were disinclined to write a lot of them. Writing a content management system to outsource elements that could make 1000 strong pages was a 2-3 day task, and now a new page takes minutes to build. We know we're going to execute on that now.

Just a bunch of random overcaffeinated points on Patrick's post.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you listen to one thing I say in 2009, let it be this: Bookmark the above comment and execute on it.

I wanted to mention a lot of it but figured "client confidentiality" (although in the future I will hopefully have more stringent and expensive definitions for "client" than "bought me a cup of coffee").

<comment><USER4> The more I think about it, the more I think it is almost as simple as saying this: your product team should have its own CMS.

1\. Building a CMS is trivial. For us, we found that we could take our designer's deliverable site and just serve the pages up in Sinatra verbatim as Erb instead of HTML. Done!

2\. Once your static site is nominally dynamic, you can easily improve it. Trivial things, like integrating analytics, are truly trivial, but even "significant" things are easier in your own code. For instance, screenshots are just a template substitution for us; a tiny piece of markup in any static page, and fwoosh a fully functional lightboxed captioned screenshot.

3\. A "real" CMS comes with many hundreds of developer hours put into making admin and workflow "pretty". _Wow_ is our admin/workflow not pretty. Who cares? Your CMS is more agile than a general-purpose CMS because you don't have to put a penny into stuff that doesn't matter.

4\. Once you have a dynamic site, you are now in a position to come up with "marketing features", which you won't really think about until you are in that position. Customer lifecycle + Mailchimp? User-generated content? Live-chat based beta product support? Web versions of downloadable products? These are things that are _quarterly_ objectives when you don't have your own CMS, and are _weekly_ objectives when you do.

One thing I forgot to mention in my sprawling parent comment:

 _You do not know how to do any of this stuff until you start doing it._

Content generation and SEO are a perfect example. You have no idea what you need to do until you get _something_ out there, so you can start monitoring how it gets used. For us, we wrote a page template we thought was nominally effective, and bugged it with Google Analytics. Within days of it getting spidered, the keyword logs had 10+ _obvious, trivial changes_ to make the pages more effective; we literally just had to include a couple more words ("permit" instead of "allow", for instance).

But given that we know this is true (intellectually, if not viscerally) about product development, and we can plainly see that it's true for content generation, it seems fair to suggest that it's axiomatic. You don't know how to "engineer" "marketing" until you start trying to engineer marketing. Which implies: you shouldn't wait to figure out exactly what to do.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with all of the above. It is almost the shadow case for Rails or your web framework of choice: the last 2+ years of development of my website has been starting with a 300 line core and then just bolting stuff on. (And when I say "stuff", I mean everything from my own automated bookkeeping system to A/B testing to the web version of my product.)

Thomas has teams of smart people he can deploy to have quarterly objectives, but I don't, so I generally look to Things I Can Get Done In A Weekend, which typically means little 300 to 500 line featurelets. Somewhat surprisingly, that actually works.

(Incidentally, while adding new features to the product often takes significant amount of time to test, little marketing featurelettes are often self-contained and more or less consequence-free. The Q/A cycle on them is pretty much "Re-run existing tests and observe they don't break." followed by "Deploy to production.")

Like Thomas says, most of this stuff will not obviously be on the roadmap when you start out. Often, you'll discover in the course of reviewing usage of Featurelette 17 that there is an opportunity for improvement or ( _cringes_ ) synergy, so you just schedule Featurelette 18 to bolt on a little more.

I could tell you a dozen stories that fit that pattern. "Hey, I bet it would help to have a web app. Hey, why doesn't my web app have dedicated landing pages? Hey, I could reuse content from the CMS to populate those landing pages."

<comment><USER4> It turned out the content we were generating for search marketing: very valuable in the product as well. Wouldn't have thought about it, except that we had the content staring us in the face. _You have to start doing stuff to get the better ideas_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand the argument for your own CMS. I currently use Drupal and don't see any problems creating modules (many of them already exist) to add all sorts of functionality I come up with for many different types of sites. Creating your own CMS sounds like a nice idea, but to me it seems like reinventing a lot of different wheels which already exist. If they don't exist, they are pretty easy to attach. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER4> If you are a Drupal expert, if Drupal is the fastest way you can build a tiny new webapp, then use Drupal. I'm a Ruby person, and the fastest way for us to get interesting features onto our existing product site was to serve them with Ruby.

<comment><USER5> That seems like a different notion from the one presented in the article was my point. I agree with what you've written, you should stick to what you can build it most efficiently in. However the article had a section:

>"Write your own CMS. I would have totally disagreed with this advice up until last week or so, but Thomas convinced me: writing a single-purpose CMS is pretty much the new Hello World for modern web frameworks (heck, it is the official Rails demo), and with a man-week or two you can make something much more productive for your purposes than using, e.g., Wordpress. (Though if you can do whatever functionality you need as a Wordpress plugin, I'd still be inclined to suggest that. No need to reinvent the wheel for basic CRUD operations on textual content, or HTML parsing.)"

My argument is that within the existing CMS options it's almost always easier to just create a module to add the functionality rather than trying to create your own CMS. I work with Drupal as you stated and it's pretty open to what can be done with it and quite easy to add almost any functionality I want. So the quoted piece from the text is a bit confusing from the article.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do people come and stand behind you and watch your screen? - <AUTHOR> This is is an open plan office specifically. When I go over to someone else's desk I will say 'hey' or something to get the persons attention as a I approach so they know I'm coming to talk to them. Some people will come and stand behind me and watch my screen / over my shoulder until I notice <i>them</i> and then start taking. Does this happen to you and do you care? I can't stand it but not sure how to resolve the situation without coming across as rude. <comment><USER2> Two things:

1) Notice them sooner and deal with it--either ask them to come back later, or be proactive and start talking, or ignore them. A monitor mirror makes it easy to notice when they're doing it.

2) You'd rather they interrupt you, they'd rather not interrupt you. Too late, but they think they're being polite.

I don't see how anything there is rude, but I probably have mild Asperger's. If you don't want it to happen again ask them to send a (whatever messaging system you use) note to get your attention.

Other options:

* Get an "On Air" or equivalent sign. Train your humans to respect it with the caveat that if you're expected to have office hours, people are going to bother you.

* Have office hours and train your humans to only bug you during those office hours.

* Get a focused sound beam that pierces their heads so it's too uncomfortable to stand behind you. Or randomly spin around in your chair and strike them down.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not rudeness really, just irritating and only some people do it, I'd say most people will say something to get my attention. Do you do this too? If I'm clearly not talking to someone else why stand there silently if I haven't noticed you? Seems the same as calling someone on the phone but not saying anything.</comment></comment>


Getting actionable insights from reviews using Machine Learning - <AUTHOR> https://blog.monkeylearn.com/getting-actionable-insights-from-reviews-using-machine-learning-part1/ <comment><USER2> How exactly are these actionable?</comment>


Review our startup Akabbo - <AUTHOR> http://akabbo.ug Making crowdfunding work in Africa. Starting in Uganda. <comment><USER2> Is it a crowd-funding platform for the third sector?

What differentiates you from other platforms offering the same thing?

I read right down to the footer before it mentioned crowdfunding. It would make your description a bit less ambiguous if you mentioned it. I would stop trying to use bigger words to explain what you do and start being a bit more concise and to the point. It might help people make up their mind on whether to use your service or fund an organization on your platform.

What countries are you licensed to raise funds in?</comment>


Decentralizing Identity - <AUTHOR> http://continuations.com/post/79187457919/decentralizing-identity

<comment><USER2> Ok, so let's move from a centralised identity (say email) that some people control themselves while the rest majority a big corporate to do it for them, to a distributed identity (that far less people will understand than email) where some people control their own data but the majority will use a third party (like the same set of big corps) to do it for them. Where's the advantage in this distributed system again?</comment>


Stop Hiding Behind "Technical Debt" - <AUTHOR> http://blog.aha.io/index.php/product-managers-stop-hiding-behind-technical-debt/

<comment><USER2> Everything in moderation, even moderation!</comment>


Ask HN: Advice on creating a POS system? - <AUTHOR>

I've created an awesome database application that is great for small businesses and one of the niches I'm considering selling it to are retail stores that want to put their inventory online.
This market is dominated by POS software systems.  Every retail org has one, just about.  I was wondering if any of you have created a POS system and whether or not it is difficult to create this type of functionality for an inventory management system.
Anything I need to think about or resources you can recommend? <comment><USER2> slightly different scope, but i had a customer that owned a couple restaurants and had a custom POS written in vb.net that they were trying to turn into a product to market to other restaurants. it was very poorly written and their developer eventually bailed on the project, but it had everything from food order entry screens, to food supply inventory, to employee management and interfacing with a badge/swipecard printer, to a map editor for the layout of the restaurant to be able to track which waitresses had which tables.

what have you seen in POS systems that you didn't like that would make you want to create a new one?

<http://checkoutapp.com/> looks like a nice system for a mac-based store.

</comment><comment><USER3> Every market is dominated by POS software systems. Oh, you meant something else by "POS".

</comment><comment><USER4> The dual meaning of this acronym is always hilarious :)

<comment><USER5> If you want a POS, write in some erlang.</comment></comment>


Sharing Photographs - <AUTHOR> https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/sharing-photographs/ <comment><USER2> I noticed one of the Related Content articles was regarding a picture collection from the Museum of Victoria, Australia.

I was was really impressed when I clicked through to find this museum provides a full API for accessing their content[1], and everything is at minimum Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.[2]

I'm sure some other museums already have something similar, but I wish even more would follow this lead.

[1] [http://collections.museumvictoria.com.au/developers](http://collections.museumvictoria.com.au/developers)

[2] [https://github.com/museumsvictoria/collections- online](https://github.com/museumsvictoria/collections-online)

</comment><comment><USER3> A couple of anecdotes as a photographer, a part-German triple-citizen Wikipedian, someone who has scanned significant German photography of the same period, and someone who likes to read and access reference works but lives in China (where there are slim to no English language libraries).

The first example in the article is that of Germany. For some reason, a few years ago I helped to write the article on the _Wa_ (a kind of native, long- distance voyaging canoe of Micronesia), and we found out there were full scale _wa_ in the Berlin Museum of Ethnology. I've since even been to see them. Unfortunately, though we were able to find a German person to potentially volunteer to go take pictures of it, the rules in Germany are that you aren't allowed to publish images you take in the museum! This strikes me as "back- assward".

A second note on Australia. A friend of my father's in Sydney is a bit of a dilettante (he grew up playing in the WWII-era ruins of East London), and discovered that his elderly neighbor had a box full of glass plate photographs documenting in spectacular resolution previously unknown views of northern Sydney. He said that he planned to ask her to donate them to the State Library, but I implored him to first at least send scans to Wikipedia Commons, since they will be far more effective at making them both discoverable and generally available for scholarly research. This request fell on deaf ears. To date, I still haven't seen them.

That said, of course there are limitations to Wikimedia Commons, but it's not bad at all. I am personally in possession of approximately 16,000 postcards from around the 1900 period which I plan to host on their own website. Currently I have scanned something short of about 2000 of them. It's a hobby, I enjoy it, but the sorts of classification strategies, automation strategies and get-some-damn-money-back strategies I have do not permit a Wikimedia Commons compatible approach.

Also recently I visited the National Library of Spain in Madrid. I calmly explained that I had come from Australia and wanted to photograph some early images of pacific island watercraft from their library. They wouldn't even let me in, as I wasn't currently affiliated with a university, individual researchers were not allowed, and Wikipedia didn't cut it for them as a research institution. I was truly shocked - if I were Spanish I would have been livid.

Finally, I would like to point out that the resolution the scans are made at by a lot of libraries is _PATHETIC_. For example, check out some of the Japanese woodcuts evidenced in the East Asian section of the _new_ MKG database. There is _no way you can even read the text_ , eg. [http://sammlungonline.mkg-hamburg.de/en/object/Aus-dem- Hakke...](http://sammlungonline.mkg-hamburg.de/en/object/Aus-dem-Hakkenden- Kampf-auf- dem-H%C5%8Dry%C5%ABkaku/S2009.225.c/dc00115422?s=%2A&h=120&f\[\]=collection%3AOstasien)

How these people can spend years becoming supposed archivist librarians with digital chops and miss the damn point so clearly - not just on use, but more critically on maintaining the relevance of their entire class of institution to upcoming generations who increasingly don't give a damn (because they are fully aware they are hotbeds of backward anachronism) - never ceases to amaze me. As a researcher, it frustrates the hell out of me.</comment>


Generate diagram images from simple text files - <AUTHOR> http://blockdiag.com/en/ <comment><USER2> Solved since 2009? [http://plantuml.com/](http://plantuml.com/)</comment>


America's Looming Primary-Care Crisis - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/science/medical-dispatch/americas-looming-primary-care-crisis <comment><USER2> My understanding is that a major cause of America's burgeoning healthcare burden is the food environment.

The argument I've heard smarter, better informed people than me make is: If healthcare were nationalized, it would incentivize the government to help fight the battle against itself in the context of unhealthy agricultural subsidies and policies.

When the government subsidizes farming corn on a massive scale, and all these corn-derived products make people obese and give them diabetes, it becomes counter to the government's own goals if its charter includes providing affordable healthcare to all.

If we don't stop subsidizing liquid sugar, it'll continue finding its way into everything possible.

What kills me is people proposing taxing products w/added sugar... talk about the American way; spend people's tax dollars on subsidies producing the sugar, then tax them again for consuming the thing you made cheap with their taxes! smh

<comment><USER3> I think you are misunderstanding the incentives that drive politicians if you think extra health care costs would make them change their subsidy policy. They subsidize because the recipients are powerful donors who want them. It isn't because it is sound fiscal policy.

<comment><USER4> Adding to this; there is also no evidence that the US's politicians care about financial incentives as applied to the US government.

If it affects them personally then they'd jump like a cat on a stove; but if it only affects the budget they aren't going to respond to any incentive.

If the US was being influenced by financial incentives it wouldn't be doing many of the things it does. Like tax cuts or spending more money.

<comment><USER5> The monetary policy of the USA is insane these days. Tax cut and spend is here for the moment. Taxes will go up but so will spending...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anecdotal data point about primary care:

About a year or so ago I subscribed to "direct/concierge primary care practice". I pay $80/month and in exchange getting an access to a primary doctor who takes care of keeping an eye on me, my blood pressure, all my prescriptions (some of which used to require monthly visits to specialists). I am also getting access to really cheap prices on labs, typically 30 min visits same or next day if I wanted (unlimited visits per months), EKG when I wanted to put my mind at peace right there in the office ($25 one time fee), etc. Doctor is available over the phone, text or email. Does not dismiss me when I mention "I've read on internet..." something and actually explains things. Basically, I think it will take care of the most of my health care needs, as well as puts my mind at ease thanks to easy access to the doctor.

The doctor also refers me to specialists who's cash-prices were often below my co-pays.

For major accidents I still have a traditional health insurance with high out- of-pocket limit bought at the marketplace (self-employed).

This practice existed for quite some time and thanks to the subscription-based fees (not episodic described in the article), I expect it to be a long-term sustainable business. It is also owned by the doctor as far as I am aware. They explicitly do not deal with private or public insurances. (Although by recent law changes I can charge monthly fee to HSA account).

There are a few practices like that in the area. Can't say if others are similar in experience, but fees - are. So it looks like it is possible to build sustainable business around primary care. But it takes a different approach.

<comment><USER7> I'd be interested in enrolling in a similar service. How do you find out about these services in your area?

<comment><USER8> _Your best bet to find a direct primary care physician is to do an online search including "direct primary care" and the name of your state._

[https://www.nextavenue.org/direct-primary-care-time-with- doc...](https://www.nextavenue.org/direct-primary-care-time-with- doctor/#:~:text=Online%20directories%20of%20providers%20exist%2C%20but%20their%20quality,have%20a%20good%20handle%20on%20your%20personal%20finances).

<comment><USER9> [https://dpcalliance.org/directory/#!directory/map/ord=rnd](https://dpcalliance.org/directory/#!directory/map/ord=rnd)

or

www.dpcfrontier.com/mapper/

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> And then we chase away thousands of foreign doctors serving even rural areas with bs like this. [https://money.cnn.com/2018/06/08/news/economy/immigrant- doct...](https://money.cnn.com/2018/06/08/news/economy/immigrant-doctors- green-card-backlog/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> There is just way more money in being a specialist. I don't really understand why specialists like radiologists or anesthesiologists make >500k by default While primary doctors make much less. In Germany the medical associations set reimbursements rates per specialty. I assume it's similar in the US.

Simple solution: balance reimbursements towards primary care. But I assume there is a powerful lobby with deep pockets that will fight such a change.

<comment><USER12> The assumptions are incorrect. Medical associations may influence supplies to some degree but they don't set the price. Supply, demand, and what the market may bear do. There are also really several different healthcare systems. The government can set say VA rates and medicare to some degree. The sort of balancing done is encouraging more family doctors.

Radiology and anesthesiology are also two "cash cows" of procedures. All of internal medicine wants radiology for tests and needs anesthesiologists if surgical remedies are required.

Primary care pays less because it requires less additional training than the specialties. Although some specialties aren't higher - Children's Oncology for instance.

<comment><USER11> I was thinking about this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specialty_Society_Relative_Val...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specialty_Society_Relative_Value_Scale_Update_Committee)

"Supply, demand, and what the market may bear do."

I agree about "what the market may bear". Normal supply and demand market ideas really don't apply to a lot of medical areas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here's the previous thread on this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23881342](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23881342)

</comment><comment><USER14> > Payers routinely reimburse health-care providers for specialized procedures > at high rates, but primary-care visits—which might include chronic-disease > management, routine vaccinations, or smoking and diet counselling—generate > lower revenues. This imbalance is due, in large part, to the Relative Value > Update Committee (R.U.C.), an extraordinarily powerful group of doctors that > advises the federal government on reimbursement rates for physicians. The > R.U.C. consists of thirty-one doctors convened by the American Medical > Association; it's structured such that each specialty has an equal say. On > the R.U.C., urology, thoracic surgery, and head-and-neck surgery have, > individually, about the same representation as all of pediatrics. The > Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (C.M.S.), which has final > authority to set payment rates for Medicare, has in many years accepted the > R.U.C.'s recommendations nearly ninety per cent of the time.

This is more deadly than it appears on the surface.

For example, this article on life expectancy is a good read. One should pay close attention to the case of South Korea and how they are focusing on the health of the younger generation, which has the best payoff (By the way, I am both a citizen of the US and Croatia. The biggest difference: Croatia is going the right way, the US is not): [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your- health/wp/2017/0...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your- health/wp/2017/02/21/us-life-expectancy-will-soon-be-on-par-with-mexicos-and- croatias/)

Archived version of link: [http://archive.is/3EpBi](http://archive.is/3EpBi)

</comment><comment><USER15> Well well well, if it isn't the consequences of 50+ years of terrible policy making. Who could've seen this coming except every other country on the planet?

<comment><USER16> You really think 5 months of a pandemic is going to expose this? New York is returning back to normal. The new surges will pass in the same time frame (5 months). The looming primary care crisis will show itself on a much longer time frame. It's a snake that's wrapping around, slow acting venom, and we'll finally see it when it's not just the ailing boomers that will need continuous care for ubiquitous things like Diabetes, but gen x, y, and z after it.

No one's gonna die, that's when it's all going to come to a head. We cannot afford Medicare for all when everybody is fucking sick.

<comment><USER17> Should health insurance, private or public, really pay to deal with people's self-induced health problems from eating too much, smoking, etc?

<comment><USER18> A healthcare system should strive to make the care people need affordable.

Your framing is boring, we need to figure out how to make the care as widely available as possible regardless of the payment model.</comment></comment></comment></comment>