6 ms·

I've lost a lot of faith in medical professionals recently to the point I almost don't want to waste time with them unless I really have to. I was having issues

I've lost a lot of faith in medical professionals recently to the point I almost don't want to waste time with them unless I really have to. I was having issues with severe pain and tension in all of my movements. My doctor shrugged it off twice, the third time my wife came and she read him the riot act for not taking me seriously. I did a blood test same day and my rheumatoid factors were so off the charts(doctors words) he was surprised I wasn't more vocal. Dude, I came to see you two times before, I need to cause a scene in your office to get real care? Then my wife went for hip surgery. We were told it was routine, everything is going to be great, less pain, better range of motion. My wife came out of the ER with the inability to move her leg, drop foot, nerve damage. She went in able and came out disabled. 3 big surgeries later, she can walk again. UCSF doesn't want to hear us out on anything related to that botched surgery and the surgeon has since moved to New York. Dealing with medical professionals is like dealing with toddlers. You have to push them on everything or they simply do not care.

yetanotherloss 3y ago
They're being squeezed by patient demand and administrations simultaneously, the whole system in the US has seemed on the brink of collapse since 2020. I get all my care done in Taiwan and everything is fine and the doctors all seem to be mostly happy with their jobs, and a few regular nurses like me because I look like a famous actor, so they're always pretty chatty and seem to be mostly ok with life.
- sergiotapia 3y ago
  Would you care to share more on how you do this? Do you just fly out and pay out of pocket? How do you find specialists? Curious about this for my mother.
  - yetanotherloss 3y ago
    I have permanent residency in Taiwan so it's easy for me, although before that it was still easier than anything in the US, just not next to free without their national insurance. I don't necessarily encourage medical tourism but simply fly to Taipei, find a doctor you want to see, and sign up for an appointment. It will be a little more work without the NHI card but still probably less than whatever you're dealing with. If you get medical scans, almost everyone can print a CD with them in a day or two if you ask. Getting care even without insurance was cheaper than just my US insurance premiums. Having someone fluent in Chinese is important enough I'd say it was required but if you restrict yourself to a smaller sunset of hospitals and clinics that serve foreigners around like Tianmu you may be able to get by with a translator app. People outside NHI are uncommon and their medical system isn't really set up to support it. You may want to consider actual medical tourism facilities of which I've heard of several in Mexico or Costa Rica. You and your mother may also want to consider rioting, because the US system is deliberately and almost uniquely stupid.
  - latchkey 3y ago
    Check out Thailand. Medical tourism is a thing. Generally, yes... pay out of pocket, but it is so inexpensive compared with insurance that it isn't a big deal. Also, people don't realize, you can get health insurance in other countries. Prior to covid, I was an expat living in Vietnam and had very good full health coverage for about $4500 a year. I just found a local insurance broker who did all the paperwork for me.
- TaylorAlexander 3y ago
  The US medical system is such a mess. I go to get blood drawn regularly and even with an appointment sometimes the wait is over 90 minutes. There will be people who had an appointment but they were five minutes late so they got put on the walk-in waitlist, which often never gets processed so they sit for hours only to get dismissed. Everything costs too much money and the service is awful. It’s just a nightmare.
jacobsenscott 3y ago
Unless doctors can see with their naked eye what's wrong they just give you the boot unless you fight hard, diagnose yourself with google, and demand tests. I used to think doctors got mad at googlers because they would find crazy wrong answers and waste their time. Now I know it is because it reveals their incompetence. I laugh whenever anyone says the US has the "best medical system in the world".
- nradov 3y ago
  The quality of a medical system can only be reliably assessed through population level outcomes, not individual anecdotes. In some specific metrics such as cancer 5-year survival rates, the USA is consistently at or near the best in the world. In other metrics such as maternal and infant mortality we're way behind. It's inconsistent and patient experiences will vary widely based on medical condition and location.
  - mensetmanusman 3y ago
    One must normalize to how unhealthy the population is, in that case, the US medical system is doing amazingly well!
    - talkin 3y ago
      But still the little detail that of the 30 richest countries, it’s the only one where you can go bankrupt if you have medical bad luck. ;)
      - mlyle 3y ago
        While medical expenses can push you to bankruptcy, more often it's the loss of earning potential that does it with severe illness (whether directly or because of need to care for family member). That is, our general health cost picture and way insurance works is a subject of concern, but the bigger issue for this specific talking point is just general lack of safety net.
- 3y ago
pixl97 3y ago
Unfortunately this isn't a great take either. I'm not sure what you do, but lets say you're a programmer. You love programming and want to make the world better with it. Of course you also have $400,000 in education debt from becoming a programmer and need a job to ensure you don't end up bankrupt. So you get a job for $bigCorp that pays well. BigCorp tells you that you must push out 100,000 lines of code per day or you're out. You look around and all the jobs in what you do pretty much act the same way, and those bills are coming up at the end of the month. Now, you know you cannot turn out quality code at that rate so you cut back quality to a bare minimum to meet the metrics of continued employment. Most doctors are in a similar situation these days, very few independent offices exist. They are parts of "GiantHealthCareCorpofAmerica,INC" that cares far more about how much the shareholders are going to make than how the patents are, even though each individual doctors would like to give better individual patient care.
- brvsft 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - mensetmanusman 3y ago
    His point was that Dr. behavior is a symptom of US dysfunction. Take away medical debt, triple the number of doctors, reduce pay to reduce selection pressure on $ chasers, etc. and you will start addressing causes of the symptoms.
    - brvsft 3y ago
      So again, his solution is to completely rewire the US health care system, which is inactionable when someone's health is at stake.
- sgtnoodle 3y ago
  That's not the impression I've developed, having been a software engineer for about 15 years. I think I spent about $100k total, and got a bachelor's and a master's degree without any subsidies. 400K in student loans for a computer science engineering degree seems pretty steep. That would have to be out-of-state tuition at a pretty nice school. (I suppose we've been in a decade of low interest rates, so perhaps folk have been more willing to borrow a lot more?) I've worked at a BigCorp, and never had lines of code as a performance metric. Lately at my current job, I practically write no lines of code per day, and instead spend most of my time designing solutions to problems and mentoring others.
bowsamic 3y ago
My appendix exploded while inside of me bc the doctors dismissed my severe abdominal pain as "bad diet". I then had severe infection and had an agonising week in hospital. This was when I was about 16, so more than a decade ago, it was the NHS in the UK.
wyldberry 3y ago
I have a lot of good friends who took the path to be a physician when i opted back into tech. It's been staggering to see 100% of them say never go into medicine, at least in the US. Two are considering leaving the country to practice when their loans are paid off. My personal side project is finding and documenting ways to get treatment while avoiding the insurance system as much as possible. IMO you really should only see a GP in the sick-care system as someone to order the most basic labs and screenings, and to receive reports you seek out on your own from specialists who take cash payments. You can download the US Preventative Services App, punch in your data, and see the recommended screeners for your situation. https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/apps/ https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/apps/
- justinbaker84 3y ago
  I agree that this is the best possible solution in the american healthcare system for any chronic issues. For accute issues like getting in a car accident going through the established system is still the best option.
diob 3y ago
It is surprisingly normal in my experience to have doctors fail to mention nerve damage etc. It's absolutely wild to me.
Tade0 3y ago
> Dealing with medical professionals is like dealing with toddlers. You have to push them on everything or they simply do not care. I noticed a similar problem in other fields. The other day I spent an additional, unnecessary hour at the dealership, because the guy who was supposed to notify me that the car is ready... vanished. He had three other clipboards from other customers on his desk when I arrived to ask about the status. My mortgage application process was, simply put, a dumpster fire - my form sat idle for a month until someone finally looked at it. I feel as if all the accumulated karma from all my botched ticket estimates is finally coming back.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  “I feel as if all the accumulated karma from all my botched ticket estimates is finally coming back.” Let us know if this is true so we can prove the simulation hypothesis.
sizzle 3y ago
Sorry but what does reading the “riot act” mean in this context? Never heard this before.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  It is an idiom meaning she yelled at them.
- amenhotep 3y ago
  Wikipedia search recommended! It comes from a UK law called the Riot Act granting officials the power to forcefully disperse gatherings if they refuse to disperse after a verbally delivered warning - the precise wording of which was specified by the Act. So an official would literally read the Riot Act to a troublesome group, and if they kept it up, the lads with truncheons would come and start cracking heads. The idiomatic transfer is fairly obvious, although the implication of consequences if the admonished party is insufficiently contrite has become sort of optional, I think.
dekhn 3y ago
I'll just augment this by saying: you have to push them, but learn to push properly. This means not being aggressive (yelling), or dismissive (even if you know medical research as well as the doctor), being patient, repetitive, and sometimes even play dumb.

yetanotherloss 3y ago

They're being squeezed by patient demand and administrations simultaneously, the whole system in the US has seemed on the brink of collapse since 2020. I get all my care done in Taiwan and everything is fine and the doctors all seem to be mostly happy with their jobs, and a few regular nurses like me because I look like a famous actor, so they're always pretty chatty and seem to be mostly ok with life.

sergiotapia 3y ago
Would you care to share more on how you do this? Do you just fly out and pay out of pocket? How do you find specialists? Curious about this for my mother.
- yetanotherloss 3y ago
  I have permanent residency in Taiwan so it's easy for me, although before that it was still easier than anything in the US, just not next to free without their national insurance. I don't necessarily encourage medical tourism but simply fly to Taipei, find a doctor you want to see, and sign up for an appointment. It will be a little more work without the NHI card but still probably less than whatever you're dealing with. If you get medical scans, almost everyone can print a CD with them in a day or two if you ask. Getting care even without insurance was cheaper than just my US insurance premiums. Having someone fluent in Chinese is important enough I'd say it was required but if you restrict yourself to a smaller sunset of hospitals and clinics that serve foreigners around like Tianmu you may be able to get by with a translator app. People outside NHI are uncommon and their medical system isn't really set up to support it. You may want to consider actual medical tourism facilities of which I've heard of several in Mexico or Costa Rica. You and your mother may also want to consider rioting, because the US system is deliberately and almost uniquely stupid.
- latchkey 3y ago
  Check out Thailand. Medical tourism is a thing. Generally, yes... pay out of pocket, but it is so inexpensive compared with insurance that it isn't a big deal. Also, people don't realize, you can get health insurance in other countries. Prior to covid, I was an expat living in Vietnam and had very good full health coverage for about $4500 a year. I just found a local insurance broker who did all the paperwork for me.
TaylorAlexander 3y ago
The US medical system is such a mess. I go to get blood drawn regularly and even with an appointment sometimes the wait is over 90 minutes. There will be people who had an appointment but they were five minutes late so they got put on the walk-in waitlist, which often never gets processed so they sit for hours only to get dismissed. Everything costs too much money and the service is awful. It’s just a nightmare.

jacobsenscott 3y ago

Unless doctors can see with their naked eye what's wrong they just give you the boot unless you fight hard, diagnose yourself with google, and demand tests. I used to think doctors got mad at googlers because they would find crazy wrong answers and waste their time. Now I know it is because it reveals their incompetence. I laugh whenever anyone says the US has the "best medical system in the world".

nradov 3y ago
The quality of a medical system can only be reliably assessed through population level outcomes, not individual anecdotes. In some specific metrics such as cancer 5-year survival rates, the USA is consistently at or near the best in the world. In other metrics such as maternal and infant mortality we're way behind. It's inconsistent and patient experiences will vary widely based on medical condition and location.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  One must normalize to how unhealthy the population is, in that case, the US medical system is doing amazingly well!
  - talkin 3y ago
    But still the little detail that of the 30 richest countries, it’s the only one where you can go bankrupt if you have medical bad luck. ;)
    - mlyle 3y ago
      While medical expenses can push you to bankruptcy, more often it's the loss of earning potential that does it with severe illness (whether directly or because of need to care for family member). That is, our general health cost picture and way insurance works is a subject of concern, but the bigger issue for this specific talking point is just general lack of safety net.
3y ago

pixl97 3y ago

Unfortunately this isn't a great take either. I'm not sure what you do, but lets say you're a programmer. You love programming and want to make the world better with it. Of course you also have $400,000 in education debt from becoming a programmer and need a job to ensure you don't end up bankrupt. So you get a job for $bigCorp that pays well. BigCorp tells you that you must push out 100,000 lines of code per day or you're out. You look around and all the jobs in what you do pretty much act the same way, and those bills are coming up at the end of the month. Now, you know you cannot turn out quality code at that rate so you cut back quality to a bare minimum to meet the metrics of continued employment. Most doctors are in a similar situation these days, very few independent offices exist. They are parts of "GiantHealthCareCorpofAmerica,INC" that cares far more about how much the shareholders are going to make than how the patents are, even though each individual doctors would like to give better individual patient care.

brvsft 3y ago
[flagged]
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  His point was that Dr. behavior is a symptom of US dysfunction. Take away medical debt, triple the number of doctors, reduce pay to reduce selection pressure on $ chasers, etc. and you will start addressing causes of the symptoms.
  - brvsft 3y ago
    So again, his solution is to completely rewire the US health care system, which is inactionable when someone's health is at stake.
sgtnoodle 3y ago
That's not the impression I've developed, having been a software engineer for about 15 years. I think I spent about $100k total, and got a bachelor's and a master's degree without any subsidies. 400K in student loans for a computer science engineering degree seems pretty steep. That would have to be out-of-state tuition at a pretty nice school. (I suppose we've been in a decade of low interest rates, so perhaps folk have been more willing to borrow a lot more?) I've worked at a BigCorp, and never had lines of code as a performance metric. Lately at my current job, I practically write no lines of code per day, and instead spend most of my time designing solutions to problems and mentoring others.

bowsamic 3y ago

My appendix exploded while inside of me bc the doctors dismissed my severe abdominal pain as "bad diet". I then had severe infection and had an agonising week in hospital. This was when I was about 16, so more than a decade ago, it was the NHS in the UK.

wyldberry 3y ago

I have a lot of good friends who took the path to be a physician when i opted back into tech. It's been staggering to see 100% of them say never go into medicine, at least in the US. Two are considering leaving the country to practice when their loans are paid off. My personal side project is finding and documenting ways to get treatment while avoiding the insurance system as much as possible. IMO you really should only see a GP in the sick-care system as someone to order the most basic labs and screenings, and to receive reports you seek out on your own from specialists who take cash payments. You can download the US Preventative Services App, punch in your data, and see the recommended screeners for your situation. https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/apps/ https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/apps/

justinbaker84 3y ago
I agree that this is the best possible solution in the american healthcare system for any chronic issues. For accute issues like getting in a car accident going through the established system is still the best option.

diob 3y ago

It is surprisingly normal in my experience to have doctors fail to mention nerve damage etc. It's absolutely wild to me.

Tade0 3y ago

> Dealing with medical professionals is like dealing with toddlers. You have to push them on everything or they simply do not care. I noticed a similar problem in other fields. The other day I spent an additional, unnecessary hour at the dealership, because the guy who was supposed to notify me that the car is ready... vanished. He had three other clipboards from other customers on his desk when I arrived to ask about the status. My mortgage application process was, simply put, a dumpster fire - my form sat idle for a month until someone finally looked at it. I feel as if all the accumulated karma from all my botched ticket estimates is finally coming back.

mensetmanusman 3y ago
“I feel as if all the accumulated karma from all my botched ticket estimates is finally coming back.” Let us know if this is true so we can prove the simulation hypothesis.

sizzle 3y ago

Sorry but what does reading the “riot act” mean in this context? Never heard this before.

mensetmanusman 3y ago
It is an idiom meaning she yelled at them.
amenhotep 3y ago
Wikipedia search recommended! It comes from a UK law called the Riot Act granting officials the power to forcefully disperse gatherings if they refuse to disperse after a verbally delivered warning - the precise wording of which was specified by the Act. So an official would literally read the Riot Act to a troublesome group, and if they kept it up, the lads with truncheons would come and start cracking heads. The idiomatic transfer is fairly obvious, although the implication of consequences if the admonished party is insufficiently contrite has become sort of optional, I think.

dekhn 3y ago

I'll just augment this by saying: you have to push them, but learn to push properly. This means not being aggressive (yelling), or dismissive (even if you know medical research as well as the doctor), being patient, repetitive, and sometimes even play dumb.