I have an idea for a product. It's a million-dollar idea if it's doable, but I don't know if it's doable. It certainly won't be done by me, because I'm not entrepreneurial -- few things sound worse to me than spending my waking hours trying to convince people to give me money -- but for somebody who actually has the business chops to do it, it could be a serious money maker. It's an AI app, and the working name is Pocket Advocate. Although, I also kinda like AIdvocate. I just worry people wouldn't know whether to pronounce it "A-I-vocate" or "aid-vocate." Anyway, here's my Shark Tank pitch...
What's the worse part of society right now? If you asked people to give their top ten answers to this question, I bet going to the doctor would be high on a lot of lists. Going to the doctor is terrible, and one big reason why it's terrible is because it's expensive, and it's confusingly expensive. You never know how much things are going to cost until you get the final bill. Even if you know your insurance plan inside and out (which most people don't), there are always little (and not so little) fees that get tacked on, and every medical clinic has their own policies and services that aren't explicitly spelled out anywhere. They just show up on your bill seemingly out of nowhere.
As an example, I got the bill for my doctor's appointment from a few weeks ago, and there was a charge for "Weekend/After 5:00 pm Service." I made the appointment online and nothing alerted me to this extra fee when I booked it. It wasn't that big, but it's still annoying. And I have a much more expensive example. When I got physical therapy done on my broken finger earlier this year, I was told there was a $10 copay at the end of each session. Being that last time I got PT it was $70 a session out-of-pocket, this seemed to good to be true to me. Indeed it was, as after I "graduated" from my therapy, I got a bill for hundreds of dollars with an itemized listing of a bunch of treatments I got while I was there -- things like "hot paraffin wax" and "electrical stimulation." Apparently, it was a $10 copay plus a bunch of other costs I would find out about later.
The thing is, I wasn't even really mad about it because I'm so used to paying for medical expenses this way. I go online and find a doctor in my network, go see them, do what they say, get the bill a few weeks later, and hope I have enough money in my HSA to pay for it. I think a lot of people do things similarly. And that's where Pocket Advocate comes into play. It's an app you run on your phone whenever you go to the doctor, and it listens to everything everybody says and tells you how much your out-of-pocket bill is going to be as you go. When you first install it, you input your insurance information into it, and then when you make an appointment with the doctor, it reads all their documentation (either it grabs it off the web automatically, or you take a picture of it and it reads it that way), so it knows everything. Then it calculates all your costs in real time.
Think about how great this product would be. Not only would there be no surprises, but it could save you a lot of money, because it would allow you to better advocate for yourself (hence the name). For example, suppose the doctor says, "This mole looks benign, but we could get it biopsied just in case." *Ping* A notification from Pocket Advocate: A biopsy will add $250 to your bill. Now maybe you don't want it. Or when a doctor hands you a splint and says you should use it for a broken finger. *Ping* A splint will add $100 to your bill. Or *Ping* Ask how much this will cost. This same implement is available on Amazon for $35. Who wouldn't want this product? Just charge a few bucks to initiate a session plus a few cents per minute of use, and then that's you rolling in the dough. It's brilliant.
Now, there is a big question of whether or not this product is even possible. To that I say, if AI can take over the world, like has been speculated, then it can figure out how to calculate a medical bill in real time. And this would be an actual good use of AI -- a product that helps people by doing something no human could practically do. That's what AI should be used for, in my opinion. We don't need it to feed us heaping servings of internet slop -- which is largely what it does right now -- as we are already quite good at doing that ourselves.
------------------------------------
In other news, I'm currently watching two shows -- Pluribus and The Chair Company. I'm about halfway through each of them and think they are both excellent, for very different reasons. Pluribus has got that brilliant Vince Gilligan storytelling, and Rhea Seehorn is so good in everything. At first I was worried it was another zombie dystopia show -- I got serious The Last of Us vibes from the first half of the first episode -- but it's not that. If anything, it's a zombie utopia show. And it raises some interesting questions about humanity. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll just say that I'm not sure I would choose the path the protagonist is going down. I'm not that defiantly individualistic.
As for The Chair Company, it's just funny. Tim Robinson isn't everybody's cup of tea -- S, for example, couldn't make it through the first episode of this show -- but he certainly is mine. The Chair Company makes me literally (and I mean that literally) laugh out loud a few times an episode. Tim Robinson is the master of coming up with things so completely weird and random that you can somehow still recognize as a joke. Most of the time when I hear people say How did they even come up with that?! in relation to comedy, it's about something that a lot of funny people could have come up with. Most funny people, even super funny people, sound a lot like other funny people. But with Tim Robinson, I'm legit How did he even come up with that? It's just so bizarre and hysterical.
Alright, I'm out of time. Until next time...
No comments:
Post a Comment