Or if someone is an overweight, depressed shut-in, the treatment will be antidepressants and gastric bypass - when what they really need is a therapist/PT/buddy

Or if someone is an overweight, depressed shut-in, the treatment will be antidepressants and gastric bypass - when what they really need is a therapist/PT/buddy who plays sports and drags them out of the house to play squash. The medical system is not currently equipped to handle solutions like that. The inability to account for second-order effects seems to be a chronic failure of the large-scale systems we build. I wonder if it's because specialization means that nobody understands or is in charge of the big picture. A old-fashioned generalist "village doctor" would understand the context of your existence because they were also in your social circle, while a modern GP's role in your life is highly abstracted. Or take capitalism - if you're mono-focused on making Widgets, then you neither know nor care that Widgets are causing trouble somewhere else in the world, and you will fight viciously against anyone telling you to make fewer Widgets.