when you cant get or afford health insurance, you take what you can get.
this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2025
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you've heard of vibe coding, now introducing: vibe diagnosing!
Misinformation feels good and makes you feel like you have special, hidden knowledge. Professional advice is boring and mundane.
Doctors will also tell you to stop abusing substances, eat better, and exercise. This is because they think they're better than you.
Professional advice costs your rent and is unironically tailored to white males (major acknowledged problem in medicine right now).
Its much cheaper to ask someone you know that has your issue how they treat it, since you know they also haven't been to a doctor since they finished childhood vaccinations.
Honestly, it's about a similar standard of care. Doctors in the U.S. are too overworked to be helpful, most of my peers' experience with doctors is getting ignored and belittled by them. Add on the amount of time and money that an appt can cost, and it's not surprising that people are looking for an experience that at least gives them good vibes.
It's because your friend spends more 10 minutes listening to you, sees you more often than twice a year, and is truly paying attention to your well being.
If Doctors had time to chat and get to know you, they might gain more trust. Even in countries with funded medical systems, the amount of time a health care provider spends getting to know you personally is way down.
Why would I believe a guy who spent 10 minutes with me barely listening over my buddy who I talk to every day? I'm not saying this is a good thing, but we know what builds trust and it's not what you get in a healthcare setting.
Homeopathic practices (🤮) have great patient reviews not because they are providing better care, but because their standard appointment length is 45-90 minutes and the patient feels heard and understood in that time.
Don't look up
10 whole minutes? I paid my $25 copay for 2 minutes with a PA, just this week.
Given that my experience with the US healthcare system has largely been terrible over the last 20 years, cant say I'm shocked. Seems like every doc I visit is either a legal drug dealer or a damned rolidex. "You need to see a specialist". Please. Every damned specialist I need has a waiting list 6 months long.
One is affordable...
U.S. Gen Xer here about to give up on doctors again. In my 20's it was pill pushers, 20 years later I had physical and mental health issues that are complicated and that I had ignored because I didn't want to just have another pill shoved on me and decided to put trust in doctors.
At first, it was pretty good because I was seeing a NP who took time to listen to me and it felt like I was in on the decision of MY health. A couple of years later the hospital system decided in their interest of not making enough money to stop using NP's in that location.
I tried....I really did. I've given it a couple of years and we're not to the point of pill pushing (although with all the docs I have I'm on 8 different meds now 🤦🏻) but I've lost the ability to advocate for myself because either he's too quick and I don't think that fast or I do think that fast and he dismisses me. Testing that might be helpful in figuring out what none of the other doctors or him can figure out is denied by him, most likely because he doesn't have the time to fight with insurance (in my case Medicaid/Medicare) rather than doesn't see any value in a test. But instead of being honest with me he just says it's not helpful, at least that's what my cynical ass sees.
I'm getting my physical soon, they made a mistake with the bloodwork dates and I had to send them a message to get that corrected. I decided to advocate for a test that I thought could be useful that was just drawing more blood and he flat out denied it as helpful. Once I get my physical I'm going to try changing doctors, with the expectation that either none of them are taking new patients or have a year or longer waiting list. Oh and the message back was also just short of blaming me for their mistake.
Doctors (at least in the U.S.) are overworked, understaffed, and if you don't fit neatly in a box they can check they throw their hands up and say who knows rather than working with you to figure out what's going on. Better yet, they blame symptoms on mental health to deflect -- only to have therapists (unless they are trained in addiction and trauma-informed) disagree and refer you back to the doctor. And the cycle repeats over and over again until you are worn down enough to stop caring.
My experience hasnt been quite this bad, but I've had similar. Definitely disheartening and frustrating. Hope you get the help you need soon man.
Yikes.
Well, things like that happen if visiting a doctor is something you cannot afford because you are not insured.
And it's an open secret that doctors get kickbacks from the tests they order whether you need em or not. $800 out of pocket from an MRI that showed nothing? The dr gets a kickback on that cost. Harder to take them seriously if they're ordering useless expensive tests to line their pockets
I tried, but can't bear to read the "article," which, being Axios, is merely a collection of blips instead of actual writing and journalism.
As for the headline, I'm pleased to see plenty of common sense in the comments here. Seeing an MD in America is difficult, expensive, time-consuming, often preachy, and frequently not worth the co-pay if you're lucky enough to have insurance. "Health care providers" have made it such a hoop-jumpy and slow process, that when I'm ill seeing a doctor is about my fourth choice.
Dr. Tiktok and Dr. Instagram, I presume.
You forgot Dr. WebMD and Dr. ChatGPT.
Dr. WebMD just tells you every disease is terminal. Dr. ChatGPT cites a reddit post that tells you a sore throat means you should kill yourself.
Jokes on them. My peers ARE doctors!
They meant Medical doctors, not PhDs in Education.