People have stopped going to the doctor and most seem fine
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Re: People have stopped going to the doctor and most seem fine
#2I can't speak for others, but I'm between jobs due to the pandemic and can't afford health care without employer-provided insurance. Most people are fine most of the time, which is why it doesn't seem like a problem. But I bet that it will eventually be a problem; chronic issues need to be taken care of, and everybody can benefit from a visit to the dentist now and then.
Re: People have stopped going to the doctor and most seem fine
#3This article seems to suggest that because no spike in short-term ailments due to lower frequency of care has been observed in a 5-month span, there is no damage to the quality of our society's physical health overall. That seems incredibly myopic to me.
The real question is whether there there will be statistically detectable increases in severity or prevalence of chronic or emergent ailments in the long run. How many cancers are detected later, how many lower-back pain cases are allowed to degenerate further, etc etc. And further, do those (to my mind inevitable) subtler long-term consequences outweigh the societal gain from less healthcare spending? They may or may not, but this article doesn't even ask the question, let alone suggest ways to answer it. This feels like low-effort clickbait to me.
Re: People have stopped going to the doctor and most seem fine
#4> Most
Isn't the primary point of going to the doctor "anomaly detection" i.e. this thing is bothering me, will it go away on its own or do I need to do more? Most being fine is expected, doesn't mean losing doctors visits was not a big deal. I've heard lot of speculation that we've lost months of early cancer detections due to the lockdown for example. Future date statistical analysis will confirm the long term cost of sacrificing thousands of doctor visits.
Re: People have stopped going to the doctor and most seem fine
#5Iatrogenesis. Nassim Taleb explains a great deal about it in Antifragile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iatrogenesis
Re: People have stopped going to the doctor and most seem fine
#6Most people were also stuck at home, living a much lower impact lifestyle.
Re: People have stopped going to the doctor and most seem fine
#7If I could get antibiotics for strep or sinus infections without going to them, I'd pretty much never go. Those visits are really dumb because I already know what's wrong, and just need them to say "yep, it's the thing you already knew it was, here's a prescription and a bill for doing nothing useful"
... actually on reflection already knowing what's wrong and just needing a doctor to say it so treatment can proceed is the norm for interaction with doctors generally among friends and family. Including having to gently walk the doctor to the correct diagnosis so they don't waste a bunch of time and get you in for more visits and tests than you need.
Re: People have stopped going to the doctor and most seem fine
#8The postponed dentist visits will have their fallout (!) eventually. Delayed annual visits to check for skin cancer, colon cancer etc will statistically hurt us. Mammograms put off, should have a definite downside in terms of early detection.
Heck, even delaying car maintenance will cost folks hard cash later. The bill will definitely come due, for the slowdown.
Re: People have stopped going to the doctor and most seem fine
#9> In a recent survey, only one in 10 respondents said their or a family member’s health had worsened as a result of delayed care during the pandemic.
That's 30 million people. And in a fantasy world where going to the doctor in America was cheap and easy, I imagine most people would be happy to go regularly if they knew there was a 10% chance it would make them healthier.
Also, how are people answering this survey? One of the main points of going to a doctor is to detect problems or risky behavior that you don't know about. You cannot replace going to the doctor with answering the single question self-assessment "Has my health worsened?"
Re: People have stopped going to the doctor and most seem fine
#10This is like a cruel joke...its like saying if you are not diagnosed with a disease you don't have it.
All anyone need to look at is the incidences of people getting a chronic condition as soon become medicare eligible. Its like magic people are healthy, then they receive Medicare and they get chronic conditions...no they had the chronic condition they just weren't diagnosed and treated until Medicare eligible.
Medicare Patient Chronic Condition Statistics:
Over one half of beneficiaries less than 65 years had two or more chronic conditions compared to: Sixty-three percent of those 65-74 years, • Seventy-eight percent of those 75-84 years and, • Eighty-three percent of beneficiaries 85 years and older.
If people were covered and had access to care then the incidences would dramatically go down, instead we all but ensure by the time they hit Medicare and the taxpayers pick up the bills they have multiple expensive chronic conditions that have gone undiagnosed and untreated for years.