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From Men's Journal:
Every time you walk into a physician's office, you run the risk of overtreatment: Tests you don't need, medications that are ineffective (or dangerous), procedures that cause more problems than they solve. In many cases the best thing for your health is to do nothing.
Make no mistake: A good doctor is, or should be, your most trusted resource if you're sick. If you're not sick and he wants to treat you anyway, that doesn't necessarily make him a bad doctor. But it does make him a player in a system that operates according to the unspoken and often unexamined assumption that more treatment is better for the patient. It's unquestionably better for the financial health of the stakeholders in the system: the doctors, the pharmaceutical industry, the health-insurance companies, and the hospitals. If you don't know how the game is played, the odds go up that you'll wind up the loser.
What do you people think, will people change if they know this?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 24 2014, @04:36PM
Sometimes doctors certainly seem too fast to offer band-aid treatments.
Another problem is just plain ignorance.
Had an infection here in the tropics which admitedly looks like leishmaniasis.
Knowing that it comes from an insect bite, I knew it was NOT leishmaniasis because I cut myself in that spot.
It was a staph infection which I healed on my own using carbolic soap.
They wanted to send me in for lab tests and all kinds of blood letting.
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Wednesday September 24 2014, @04:46PM
George Washington died from blood letting via leeches.
I don't know how blood letting ever became a thing. Major stupid idea. Maybe "oh I'm so light-headed now, that must mean I'm cured."
(Score: 2) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday September 24 2014, @04:58PM
"blood letting"
The GP was saying that they wanted him to have blood tests, and that he equates this to "blood letting."
Yeah, in this anecdote he did not have an issue that warranted blood tests. But equating modern diagnostic processes to ancient superstitious practices is either dishonest or stupid.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Wednesday September 24 2014, @05:34PM
(Score: 2) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday September 24 2014, @07:06PM
Well I would agree that overdoing blood tests is useless. But comparing them to ancient superstitions is a bad analogy. An unneeded blood test wont hurt you except in your wallet. Fake medicine could kill you.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by monster on Thursday September 25 2014, @03:33PM
Suppose that when he cut himself, some other pathogen also entered the body. Say something in his dirty hands, or something in a not clean enough bathroom. Now suppose that a doctor sees him treating the wound with carbolic soap and doesn't do any extra tests. Would the AC be so happy when, three weeks later, discovers that he contracted ebola, for example? That it's too late to treat him because some doctor decided that no more tests were needed?
The problem with 'patient pays' systems is that at the end the patient has to be his own doctor, balancing procedures done (cost) against curing himself, precisely when he's the least informed and capable of making the correct and balanced decision.
(Score: 2) by tynin on Wednesday September 24 2014, @05:02PM
Only now with the benefit of hindsight does it seem like a bad idea. The consensus of the time suggested that our bodies were governed by the 4 humors, blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Keeping them in balance was a sign of a healthy person. It would have legitimately made people with high blood pressure feel better. But for everyone else it was likely a bad idea.