re: Is the healthcare system in America bloated?

So you haven’t said that…and then go on to say exactly that in a longer form. FYI there are plenty of things you can diagnose based off lab work and imaging.

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Students are taught to read charts on systems made by epic and have made diagnosis before they ever see the real person. They study things virtually and not in real time and can’t even deal with people. Some of that is corrected during residency but if it’s not coming from something electronic, they cannot deal with it.

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Students aren't taught to "read charts". We learned diagnosis and organ systems before we ever got a hint of electronic medical records.

Why are you so hung up on the medium. Do you think it's inherently better to read all of this stuff from paper before getting into clinical applications?

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Why are you so hung up on the medium.

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I’m not - I’m hung up on the fact that pills are thrown at patients before anything else is ever done.

That was my very first post in this thread.

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I’m not - I’m hung up on the fact that pills are thrown at patients before anything else is ever done.

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Welcome to medicine as a service industry.

I get shite on by patients in the office who I don't immediately give testosterone to. When I recommend diet and exercise for low testosterone I can see them get ready mentally to write up that negative review...

This isn't just a physician problem, it's patients, too.

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when the doctor only offers you pills for your symptoms instead of trying to find out what is actually wrong, it doesn’t get much dumber than that

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I'm pretty skeptical, this sound more like a cartoonish villianization than a real doctor. How would you describe your ideal clinical experience? Are the doctors aware or are they having to read your mind?

Not all doctors are bad & you can usually go to a different one. Or, you could assert yourself a bit & ask some questions instead of rolling over. If they still dismiss you, then by all means switch care, they are probably a shitty doctor.

My ortho doctor truly did suck. Would ask questions then cut me off mid-answer. Only pushed cortisone shots like you're saying. He ignored basically anything I expressed. But, it was pretty easy to switch & get better care

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This isn't just a physician problem, it's patients, too.

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yep

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I'm pretty skeptical, this sound more like a cartoonish villianization than a real doctor

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this is pretty much healthcare in Louisiana

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Or, you could assert yourself a bit & ask some questions instead of rolling over.

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I’ve done that - I’ve been told only taking pills can be the answer

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it was pretty easy to switch & get better care

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must be nice to have insurance

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Most of the time you walk into the doctor’s office and you tell them you feel bad and you don’t know why and they give you an anti-depressant

18 months later they realize it’s cancer

And when you speak with other people and it sort of looks like it’s the norm - it’s disheartening

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Ive run into sonething like this with my child. Not cancer but just LAZY arse diagnoses.

1 year old son was having breathing issues with a cough. Also throwing up and diarrhea.

Pediatrician said it was stomach bug...symptoms got worse with 12 hours...we suspected RSV...but pediatrician was like nah.

Went to a different clinic, had to force them to test the child for rsv...boom rsv...they suggest we bring them to the ER...we do. ER does nothing for a couple hours until they bring him back and hook him into the monitors...blood oxygen is like 70 and the kid is turning blue. Then once stabilized, they forget about us and the ambulance. Also had to get transferred to Children's in New Orleans because Singing River in Pascagoula only has one Pediatric dr.

Point of this story is. Drs can be lazy and the Singing River hospital system in coastal MS is awful.

my tummy is bloated

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So long as this country uses a fee for service payment system which is currently the most expensive system in the world (In 2023, the U.S. spent $13,432 per person, over $3,700 more than the next highest nation (Switzerland) the U.S. STILL has lower life expectancy and higher rates of chronic diseases compared to peer countries.

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This is $3700 more per person for health care. That $3700 does not include the significantly lower insurance premiums on all lines of insurance in other nations because the medical portion, and the most expensive by far, is already covered. In the US we have health insurance AND every other line of insurance, business and personal, has a significant amount of costs associated with medical costs. It also does not include collections efforts that cost billions every year in the US and do not exist anywhere else on the planet. It also does not include the lack of litigation in those nations which seek medical expenses, a massive part of the tort industry in the US. But we wrongly believe that people in Germany wait months for care (they do not, I know from first hand experience that its FAR easier in Germany, with basic health care, to see ANY physician, including dentists and optometrists, than it is in the US) and suffer from irrational fears about "slippery slopes" and it allows the insurance, legal and medical industris to reach into our wallet and remove whatever they see fit. But we ain't on a "slippery slope" other than the one associated with bankruptcy and early death due to inadequate access to healthcare.