4 ms·

They are required by law in Japan. Germany too, I believe.

• sbierwagen 4y ago
  Congrats to doctors in Japan and Germany for getting an eternal jobs program into national law.
  • amrocha 4y ago
    Are you trying to spin this into a bad thing? A universal program to catch diseases early and provide adequate health care to all citizens of a country? Is actually bad????
    • pja 4y ago
      Scanning a mostly healthy population for issues is going to mean that you end up with at least some false positives. Those people are going to get expensive follow on investigations & maybe treatments, with all the psychological stress that entails & it will all have been for nothing. In a few cases long term harm will be done to people who never needed treatment. Medicine is often uncertain & going looking for problems can end up being a good way to create new problems where there weren’t any before. If you propose a universal program to catch diseases early then you need to demonstrate two things: 1) there are people with these diseases that are currently not being picked up and 2) the false positive rate & harm caused is less than the existing harm being caused by missed opportunities to treat real issues. By way of example, many health services have abandoned screening programs for prostate cancer via PSA tests - the harm done was judged to outweigh any observed benefits. Even in those places that are still screening there will be an age cutoff as, below a given age, the costs are thought to outweigh any possible benefits.
      • amrocha 4y ago
        Look, I've done the research and there's pretty clear benefits to health checkups. You can do your homework if you want to. Here's the thing though, it's pretty obvious that early, regular screening and health checkups with a focus on improving health are a net positive. You go to the doctor, do some blood work, a couple x-rays, and they tell you areas where you could be healthier. Any reasonable person would agree with that. You can come up with arguments for why I'm wrong, and try to put the burden of proof on me, and by doing that you make it such a hassle to try to improve things that I just give up. This is why nothing gets done in North America anymore. There's always a reason not to change things, not to try anything new. That's how you end up with a stagnant society, crumbling healthcare system, outdated infrastructure, school shootings, global warming, housing crisis, etc. I don't know mate, I'm sure you have good intentions but it's hard for me to find a net positive outcome of your position.
        • pja 4y ago
          So that’s 300 million doctors appointments a year that could be spent doing something else - treating someone who actually has something wrong with them. That’s before we even get to the question of whether doing this actually helps more than it hurts. Is that a worthwhile use of their time? Do we see a net improvement in health outcomes if we do this? Healthcare is littered with treatments that were thought to be helpful but turned out to have negative outcomes. If you want to introduce something new it really is on you to demonstrate that it represents an improvement to the status quo, because what a “reasonable person” thinks very often turns out to be completely false & ends up doing actual harm.