Uber delivers flu shots in 36 cities, in one-day experiment

[brooklynite]

Boston Globe:

For four hours Thursday, people in Boston and 35 other cities had the opportunity to summon a nurse to their doorstep to give them a flu shot.

This experiment in “on-demand health care,” which involved the use of hundreds of Uber drivers, heralds what some consider the wave of the future: bringing health care to the people, instead of waiting for them to come and get it.


The project, dubbed UberHEALTH, was the brainchild of John S. Brownstein, a researcher at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School who develops technologies that track and promote public health.

“The concept of bringing on-demand services . . . bringing physicians and nurses to people has so many opportunities,” Brownstein said. Startup companies are enabling people to order home visits from medical professionals, he said. For example, PediaQ , available in four Texas communities, provides an app parents can use to summon a pediatric nurse practitioner to their homes during evenings and weekends.

[SusanCalvin]

1. Oh whoopie. Well, no, in theory it's a nice gesture, but....

http://www.google.com/search?q=in+these+times+uber&sourceid=silk&ie=UTF-8

[Egnever]

3. Silly

If you are driving Uber as a job you are doing it wrong.

It is a ride sharing service not a cab company.

I drive Uber in my free time when I feel like it. If I am out and about I turn the app on and if I get a ride great if not oh well. Sometimes I turn it on when sitting on my couch watching TV. Sometimes I get a ride sometimes I don't.

The point is what I get from it is free gass all month long because I turn the app on when I am available and doing nothing else. What the riders get is a decent clean car at their door in a few minutes.

Doing it as a job is stupid there are much better ways to make money and it is not intended to be a job.if you want a job driving work for a cab company the money is much more predictable.

[SusanCalvin]

4. That's great for you.

And might be for me, if I were willing to tell my insurance company. (You do, right?)

Some people need to make a living.

[Egnever]

6. Then they should get a job

Uber is not intended to be a job. It is a ride sharing service not a job. What about all the people that have been getting ripped off by cab companies for years and years their hard earned money isn't worth as much as the people who can't make a living driving for Uber? How many millions have been stolen by Cab company drivers long hauling or lost because no cab ever showed despite being told one was on it's way?

Cab companies still exist if you want a job driving there are plenty of them. As far as insurance goes there are many insurance companies offering insurance for Uber drivers with new ones coming online every day.

The Cab companies did this to themselves. People wouldn't be abandoning them in droves if they hadn't abused their customers and drivers for years.

When driverless cars become mainstream cab drivers will disappear will you shake your fist at driverless cars? Cab driver is not a growth industry. Unless you think we should keep obsolete jobs around just because people need jobs, that argument is silly. We should employ more blacksmiths!

[brentspeak]

8. Oh, so it's a "ride sharing service"

What's stopping you from simply advertising your own free "ride sharing service" on Craigslist?

Your RW talking points reminded me of something. Then I remembered: Oh, yeah -- you're the one who considers it amusing that people would condemn the TPP's condoning of modern day slavery.

[Egnever]

9. I often find the hyperbole on DU amusing

Nothing stopping you from advertising on craigslist hell there's a category for it https://lasvegas.craigslist.org/search/rid

Not surprising someone who buys into the TPP being about condoning slave labor comes back with such a ridiculous response.

[Lee-Lee]

10. I have a friend who drives for them and she makes good money

Now, she will freely admit that "on paper" her earnings are less than her actual earnings, but that's the nature of the beast. She gets to claim the full mileage rate as an expense at .55 a mile or so, and the actual operating cost of her car is around .35 a mile- so that's an extra $1 that on paper is an expense that actually goes into her pocket for every 5 miles driven.

But all in all she says after expenses she clears about $25-35 an hour. That's not bad.

[leveymg]

2. So you do publicity for RW union-busting companies as well as candidates, now, b?

Hillary and Uber, driving what's left of middle-class America off the cliff, together.

[brooklynite]

5. I'm a Transportation Planner...

...and I actually talk to UBER drivers to understand their situation. I haven't met one yet who would prefer to be a traditional taxi driver. As for "union busting": here in NYC all taxi drivers are independent contractors. And if customers were happy with traditional taxi services, UBER wouldn't have found a niche.

[Egnever]

7. From my talks with Uber drivers and the people I have picked up driving Uber

The Drivers complaining are the ones trying to make it a job. It is not supposed to be a job, though you can certainly make it work if you are willing to put in the hours. The ones like me that do it in their free time that I have spoken with are quite happy with it. Every single passenger I have spoken to loves it.

I drive 25 miles to drop my kids off at school every morning, on the way back from dropping them off in the morning I turn the app on. I easily get enough rides on my way home from dropping them off every week to pay for my gas all month and sometimes even my car payment on top. Often I will get a ride that brings me right from the school to within a mile or two of my house which is a win win all the way around as I see it. I get money for gas, my customer gets a clean inexpensive ride in a few minutes and the gas I would have wasted dead heading back to my house is instead used to help transport someone else.

I totally understand people not being happy with the money as a job. The few days I tried to do it on my days off for a long period were hit or miss. Some days I made around $25-30 an hour others I was lucky to make $10. I would not try to do it as a job. As a ride share service though it is great for both rider and driver.