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An unfortunate amount of my interaction with doctors has just been waiting for them to diagnose me or a family member with the same thing I already figured out

by asark 7y ago

An unfortunate amount of my interaction with doctors has just been waiting for them to diagnose me or a family member with the same thing I already figured out is probably going on, so we can get the drugs or treatment to fix it. Self-diagnosis on with the Web has a bad name for a good reason, but with a critical eye you can nail what the doctor's gonna say damn near 100% of the time, or at least narrow it down to the couple things they'll run tests to decide between. It's kinda fun but also kinda sad knowing everything they're gonna say and order in advance because you read stuff on the Web for 10 minutes before the visit. Obviously never let on that you've done that. The best are when you go through a couple and they can't figure out WTF is wrong and you finally get one who's like "oh yeah, I can't believe they didn't check for this, circumstances and your symptoms make it pretty likely and it's not uncommon" and you're like "yeah, I f*cking know, I read some Wikipedia before the first visit and have just been walking you all through the process of figuring it out, while I pay you for the privilege, but I can't push too hard or you'll think I'm a crank".

ibeckermayer 7y ago
Doctors in America are certified members of a caste system. In traditional caste systems, your caste was determined by blood (for example it might work like: if your dad was a doctor, you could be a doctor) but in contemporary society we’ve replaced these with government licensed caste systems: if you’ve paid your dues and gone through the certification process imposed by the alphabet soup of government bureaucracy and special interest lobbyists, you’re allowed to be a doctor; anybody who hasn’t gone through this process will be arrested if they attempt to provide medical services. Predictably, the violently enforced caste system allows all manner of incompetence and impunity to reign free — if the legistlatively enforced educational / certification standards are letting total incompetents slip through the cracks, tough luck. You can try to change them through the democratic process, but the current members of the caste have massive influence on these institutions and a vested interest in keeping it just the way it is: extremely expensive for us in exchange for minimal standards of quality for them. This outcome is entirely predictable: independent thought is the basis of all knowledge, so when a group outlaws it in some branch of human endeavor, there’s no mystery as to why that branch of the endeavor becomes fraudulent. I’m admittedly being somewhat obtuse here, since thanks to the genius of the first amendment I’m still free to think whatever I want about the medical caste and complain about it on the internet. What’s restricted are the actions I can take — for example if I wanted to build “Lambda School for Doctors”, I couldn’t legally do so without following all of the educational/certification protocols imposed on us through legislation by the status quo medical caste (which defeats the whole purpose). But because actions are downstream from ideas (thoughts) about how to act, restricting individual’s actions in this way is importantly similar to restricting freedom of thought, and has analogous consequences. Until we reform our laws to allow all adults offer and accept non-fraudulent (this qualifier demands deeper discussion about the proper legal standard of “fraudulent”) medical services, our hands are effectively tied in even beginning to address the issue.

by asark 7y ago

ibeckermayer 7y ago

Doctors in America are certified members of a caste system. In traditional caste systems, your caste was determined by blood (for example it might work like: if your dad was a doctor, you could be a doctor) but in contemporary society we’ve replaced these with government licensed caste systems: if you’ve paid your dues and gone through the certification process imposed by the alphabet soup of government bureaucracy and special interest lobbyists, you’re allowed to be a doctor; anybody who hasn’t gone through this process will be arrested if they attempt to provide medical services. Predictably, the violently enforced caste system allows all manner of incompetence and impunity to reign free — if the legistlatively enforced educational / certification standards are letting total incompetents slip through the cracks, tough luck. You can try to change them through the democratic process, but the current members of the caste have massive influence on these institutions and a vested interest in keeping it just the way it is: extremely expensive for us in exchange for minimal standards of quality for them. This outcome is entirely predictable: independent thought is the basis of all knowledge, so when a group outlaws it in some branch of human endeavor, there’s no mystery as to why that branch of the endeavor becomes fraudulent. I’m admittedly being somewhat obtuse here, since thanks to the genius of the first amendment I’m still free to think whatever I want about the medical caste and complain about it on the internet. What’s restricted are the actions I can take — for example if I wanted to build “Lambda School for Doctors”, I couldn’t legally do so without following all of the educational/certification protocols imposed on us through legislation by the status quo medical caste (which defeats the whole purpose). But because actions are downstream from ideas (thoughts) about how to act, restricting individual’s actions in this way is importantly similar to restricting freedom of thought, and has analogous consequences. Until we reform our laws to allow all adults offer and accept non-fraudulent (this qualifier demands deeper discussion about the proper legal standard of “fraudulent”) medical services, our hands are effectively tied in even beginning to address the issue.