I regularly fight bad execution plan problems like that on Oracle (more often than not after minor upgrades). And yes you can read about problems like that look

I regularly fight bad execution plan problems like that on Oracle (more often than not after minor upgrades). And yes you can read about problems like that looking at the documented incidents on the Oracle support site. And no, hints are not always the solution. Sometimes they even are the culprit. If I had a wish for Postgres, I'd rather have something like SQL profiles (or similar) where you can register an alternative plan with an existing query, not hints. Very often a full deployment in order to change a single SQL isn't an option.