“It’s Google’s fault!” (high five)
Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments
421–430 of 438 posts
Re: Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments
#422Earlier quoted context omitted.
I live in a country with private Healthcare and I could call and book an appointment with any kind of specialist anywhere from a day to 6 months. The reason it takes longer is usually because they're fully booked due to demand. And when I get an appointment, I can sit in that office for an hour asking anything I want. And my medical aid will pay for it. That is capitalism.
> And my medical aid will pay for it. That is capitalism. No, that is socialism inside capitalism. Let me explain. I assume by "medical aid" you mean insurance, right? What is insurance? It is a bunch of people pooling their money so they can reduce risk and pay for each others health care. Capice?
Difference being I get to pick in one and in the other I have no choice. Also the medical aid or insurance makes a profit, yet more capitalism.
Either way, we're talking passed each other because we have different definitions.
Re: Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments
#423Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dental insurance is sort of crappy in that what we think might be important treatments are sometimes classified as cosmetic and not covered (like implants). This is why there is a cottage industry of dentists doing implants for cheap in Tijuana.
My insurances do a good job of covering things that are related to my oral health. If I want a cosmetic improvement over a covered service, I dont have a problem paying for it. I’d rather the occasional outlay than my dental insurance being prohibitively expensive to account for a possible expensive covered cosmetic change.
What I'm saying is when you have a bad tooth, what do you expect to happen? Insurance pays for you to look like the toothless geezer spitting into the spittoon in old western films. That's the minimum standard of oral care they provide. If you want something as simple as a fake tooth, something i think anyone who gets a tooth extracted would opt to get, its not covered. Why can't I get insurance that covers this? Implants can be a lot of money and as a result there is this cottage industry of people going to other countries for lower priced implants vs having that dental care done where they get all their other dental care done. Just in terms of the carbon footprint alone that's a terrible solution.
Re: Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments
#424Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is why I like going to dental schools faculty or student practices. They are all about saving the teeth if it can be saved and will need to see sufficient evidence in the imaging before moving forward with just about anything. Things seem to take longer and involve more appointments (e.g. i have to schedule a separate appointment with dept of radiology vs the private practice dentist walking me to the next room…
I've looked into this myself and one negative is that students still have some pressure to overtreat because students have graduation requirements (e.g. must do a certain number of fillings, crowns, etc.). Granted, having to run everything by a supervisor will eliminate the egregious cases.
They can't overtreat due to the nature of it with literally all work needing a professor looking at the mouth or the work in progress and validating. If anything they need too much evidence to go forward and will want to see things like a CT to validate something in a traditional xray. When they want to do a certain amount of required things, they screen the local community for cavities and turn up plenty, including mine when I went and they were sure to point out the cavity to me on the imagery and go over my options and relative risks. Most of the times they are overburdened with demand of patients since this is about the only place where low income people can afford dental care so I expect they see plenty of examples to study. Oddly though my student told me he hoards extracted teeth to study and practice with.
Re: Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments
#425Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it depends on the context of the treatment and how specialized it needs to be. For example, I've had relatives from the U.S. who have gotten dental work done in Croatia because its cheap enough to the point where they can buy a transatlantic flight and spend some time visiting family members along with getting the root canal and crown done. A lot of people in southern California also opt to drive to Tijuana f…
Sometimes that can be a good idea. But many times, you are also getting riskier, out of date treatment for less. For example, root canals and crowns are kind of the cheaper and less effective way to treat a bad tooth. The gold standard is usually extraction and a new implant. And considering that you can find a dentist to do a root canal for $300 without too much trouble, I'm surprised anyone would be able to fly to…
I think actually it was implants that were done which my dentist quotes me $1600 for in the US
Re: Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments
#426“ Medicine has become a three-way negotiation between you, your doctor, and The Algorithm.” This characterization makes it sound like a good thing. In reality, the doctor’s responsibility is being pushed to the patient because they are overbooked in the name of economic efficiency. As a patient with complex, non-specific medical condition, I can tell you how miserable this is. I can’t count on doctors _at all_ to mov…
On the other hand, I just had a lengthy conversation with my dad on why he shouldn't drink chlorine dioxide, and that a Bitchute video from a guy who got a "doctor's of philosophy of medicine" from a diploma mill who had a patent application on drinking it to cure COVID, was selling books and lectures on his crockpotery, and had charges brought against him for two deaths resulting from drinking the thing might not be…
Some things to think about.
I personally know of a friend who walked into a Dr. office in the "top hospital" in Chicago, described her symptoms, and the Dr. without making eye contact, or saying anything, pulled out his smartphone, and googled every symptom she described. Then he said something like "lose 15 lbs. and come back if its still an issue". :-P
More importantly though, when deferring to "experts" in medical practice, you should ask yourself, "has the amount of money we've spent and 'expert training' these practitioners have gotten, and the 'breakthroughs in medicine' that they claim have occurred over the last 80 years, resulted in a statistically significant and measurable positive patient outcome?" What I'm seeing is, since the advent of hospitalization and deferral to medical 'experts', we've as a society, become much more fragile, non-resilient, addicted, overweight, and unhealthy.
Re: Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments
#427Earlier quoted context omitted.
I probably cost insurance company 300-500,000 while figuring out what was wrong with me. A full round of blood tests by a few specialist would’ve saved everyone involved a lot of money. Wasn’t even a super rare thing. Just 2 somewhat common conditions. One of which is known for being dismissed as anxiety.
For the life of me I do not understand why they just do not throw a bunch of tests at people with chronic conditions. They all say they do not know what is wrong with us bu they never do any testing, and the outcome is the same every time; patients suffer and costs are higher.
Many tests are not 100% accurate, nor do they necessarily pinpoint the problem (often they just rule something out).
There's no magic doctor who would be a flawless diagnostician if he just had more time to spend with the patient and less interference by the insurance companies. And if he did spend hours and hours on your case, and run all the tests, that would be hours he's not spending helping other people and delays in other people's labwork.
Medicine is imperfect, and diagnosis is based in large part on probabilities. Doctors do what their education and experience tells the is most likely to help. Sometimes they are wrong, because people are different, and some doctors aren't as good as others. Sorry your chronic condition was misdiagnosed. It sucks. There's no magic answer.
Re: Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments
#428Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've looked into this myself and one negative is that students still have some pressure to overtreat because students have graduation requirements (e.g. must do a certain number of fillings, crowns, etc.). Granted, having to run everything by a supervisor will eliminate the egregious cases.
They can't overtreat due to the nature of it with literally all work needing a professor looking at the mouth or the work in progress and validating. If anything they need too much evidence to go forward and will want to see things like a CT to validate something in a traditional xray. When they want to do a certain amount of required things, they screen the local community for cavities and turn up plenty, including…
There are a lot of decisions in dentistry that are subjective. There are a ton of borderline cases of cavities where you ask 5 dentists what they think, and 2 say to treat and 3 say to wait and see. This is what I'm talking about where dental schools will probably lean towards treating.
Re: Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments
#429Earlier quoted context omitted.
For the life of me I do not understand why they just do not throw a bunch of tests at people with chronic conditions. They all say they do not know what is wrong with us bu they never do any testing, and the outcome is the same every time; patients suffer and costs are higher.
Many tests are not 100% accurate, nor do they necessarily pinpoint the problem (often they just rule something out). There's no magic doctor who would be a flawless diagnostician if he just had more time to spend with the patient and less interference by the insurance companies. And if he did spend hours and hours on your case, and run all the tests, that would be hours he's not spending helping other people and dela…
I had one that was abnormal. They kept telling me to ignore. I had to push really hard for the follow up test. That one was abnormal. I was still told to ignore it. More pushing.
The next obvious test to run was negative. Did a bunch of research and found out there was another related condition. I had every symptom. Pushed really hard. Tons of positive tests for that one. They still told me ignore results.
A hard fight later I started treatment. Dramatic and immediate health improvement. Some of my doctors still refuse to believe I have condition. Process Took 3 years. The average time for diagnosis is 7 years. Had about 30 doctors during this time frame.
Not even a rare condition.
Re: Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments
#430Earlier quoted context omitted.
My insurances do a good job of covering things that are related to my oral health. If I want a cosmetic improvement over a covered service, I dont have a problem paying for it. I’d rather the occasional outlay than my dental insurance being prohibitively expensive to account for a possible expensive covered cosmetic change.
What I'm saying is when you have a bad tooth, what do you expect to happen? Insurance pays for you to look like the toothless geezer spitting into the spittoon in old western films. That's the minimum standard of oral care they provide. If you want something as simple as a fake tooth, something i think anyone who gets a tooth extracted would opt to get, its not covered. Why can't I get insurance that covers this? Imp…
Actually…you probably can, but it’s going to be more expensive that you…or your group (if it’s employer provided) will be willing to pay. So in those cases it’s not even offered.
My wife sells dental insurance to businesses. These brokers are doing plan designs that specifically exclude certain services to get monthly costs down to the expected competitive floor pricing. Think of it this way, you have 100 people in your group. 5 are willing to pay for implant coverage at $100/mo, but to get that rate, you need 75% participation of the group. 95 people will not participate if it’s more than $20 a month. Your plan design is going to be designed to appeal to the 95 over the 5 and that broker is going to bring in a plan that is as close to $20/mo without going a penny over…and hope like hell that their competition isn’t lower with a similar plan design.