PE starting to buy up dentist practices certainly has nothing to do with that.
Note that the footnote says this was originally published in 1997
So we’re enshittifying from an incredibly low base. Nice.
I went to 50 different dentists: almost all gave a different diagnosis (1997)
481–490 of 585 posts
Re: I went to 50 different dentists: almost all gave a different diagnosis (1997)
#482Earlier quoted context omitted.
well.. "twice a year".. but your insurance policy probably says 1 every 181 days.. just to rob you of the actual twice a year.. #america
There are 365.25 days in a year so insurance policy is quite generous in fact.
ehhhhh, close. Just watch out when we don't have a leap year in 2100
Re: I went to 50 different dentists: almost all gave a different diagnosis (1997)
#483Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe the NHS is seriously under-funded, the Tory government is responsible, and healthcare is suffering as a result. However, I do want to provide an anecdote to illustrate that private healthcare is not perfect. I had some persistent pain in my foot. Realized I wouldn't get anywhere with the NHS so I went private. The person I saw had an excellent manner. They suggested some fairly gnarly surgery. Said I should…
As a percentage of GDP, the UK has the 6th highest healthcare spending of OECD countries, on par with Switzerland. The UK is not an outlier in terms of spending. https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=SHA
Much more detail on funding problems here: https://nhsfunding.info/nhs-crisis-making/
Re: I went to 50 different dentists: almost all gave a different diagnosis (1997)
#484Earlier quoted context omitted.
Being a doctor is like debugging a unique humongous software application with thousands of years of organic patchwork added by a godlike AI which just generates random code and watches the failed experiments die, no source code to any of it just the final binary, no debugger that lets you kill the process and dump its memory or trace its execution, just a bunch of test cases that cost lots of money to run and may yie…
Not only that but you need to provide expertise more on the timelines of a customer support agent rather than a software developer or researcher.
Yeah. It's like a never ending stream of bug reports coming in constantly and you have like ten minutes to make sense of each and every one amidst that chaos and do something about all of it because if you don't there isn't gonna be enough time to see them all and the godlike AI's operating system is gonna start killing the buggiest of the processes assigned to you before you've even figured out what's wrong and when that happens the report is closed forever and there's nothing you can do anymore. The same bugs show up in the programs over and over again every single day and there's no permanent solution, no permanent fix at the source code level that would end the suffering of all of those programs. Just constant swimming against the current. You don't even fully understand the system you're trying to fix, it's like ancient technology left to you by a long gone alien civilization and the best you can do is reverse engineer bits and pieces of it from the outside in and top down so you can do some very educated guesswork based on research that's way too expensive to be reproduced or replicated in any way, research that doesn't produce exact predictions like physics but rather purely statistical statements like "in case of A associated with conditions B if you do C you'll fix D% of the programs". Everything is framed like this, everything, you're never fully certain, everything has risk, there's even a chance the research you're basing all of this on is just completely made up or tainted by conflicts of interest or something equally stupid.
Re: I went to 50 different dentists: almost all gave a different diagnosis (1997)
#485My son when 3 had a fall and a few teeth were bent. Went to our local dentist who mostly had a wait and see opinion. But then calls a day later and says they’ve decided they should just come out. Two top front teeth. Would have no top front teeth for years. I went into engineer mode and while I acknowledged I didn’t have domain expertise, I asked questions and probed the whole situation. Very unsatisfactory, meanderi…
>> I’m not a conspiracy nut. I believe in listening to experts (but ultimately making an informed decision). I believe in modern medicine. But that experience shook me and forever changed my trust in the dental industry. Ask anybody who’s experienced a “chronic” illness about the “experts” and they’ll tell you a tale or two. The experts are great until they have a case that is unusual. The don’t have the time or know…
Yes, wanted to write the same. I met many of those experts, and some of them try even blame the patient as some kind of "psycho" when the symptoms dont match any text book definitions.
But to be honest: There are also some motivated and honest doctors. If you find one of these, stick to them.
Re: I went to 50 different dentists: almost all gave a different diagnosis (1997)
#486Humans - the only animal species on the planet with mass teeth problems. Dentists are devil representatives.
Literally every other animal on the planet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfGEUmkQv1k
Re: I went to 50 different dentists: almost all gave a different diagnosis (1997)
#487Dentist are quacks but when you break a tooth and it gets infected the pain will take you to one and you will get an implant.
Re: I went to 50 different dentists: almost all gave a different diagnosis (1997)
#488I've posted this before, but I went to a new dentist one time and though I'd never had a cavity, the new dentist said I had nine, some of which were pretty bad and needed immediate treatment lest they require a root canal. I didn't have any money or dental insurance at the time, so I didn't go back and just worried about it a lot for a while. That was twenty-five years ago. Haven't been to a dentist since. My teeth a…
> I've posted this before, but I went to a new dentist one time and though I'd never had a cavity, the new dentist said I had nine, some of which were pretty bad and needed immediate treatment lest they require a root canal.
Once I saw a new dentist who also told me I had several cavities. Look, my teeth health isn't perfect, but any dentist that tells me I have so many cavities is a big red flag. I ended up seeing another dentist and that dentist told me I didn't have any cavities. The inconsistency between dentists is really off the charts (per TFA).
Also this quote from the article was telling:
> At a dental school, I heard about a newsletter, The Profitable Dentist, and became a subscriber. From this newsletter, I discovered that there’s a whole business devoted to telling dentists how to build up the “million dollar practice.” Dentists are flocking to courses on how to generate more profits by maximizing the use of hygienists, extending credit, stepping up collection practices, and persuading patients to accept expensive restoration work instead of fillings.
Look for any dentist trying to increase their bottom line: patients are not idiots. If a dentist tries to upsell me aggressively, I simply find another dentist. The reality is there are nearly endless dentists to choose from in my metropolitan area.
Re: I went to 50 different dentists: almost all gave a different diagnosis (1997)
#489When I was in beginning of my 20s I would put blind trust in doctors. Unfortunately I had a ligament tear in my knee and after 4 surgeries I developed some pretty bad pains. I took a vacation and scheduled visits to 10 orthopedic surgeons who had some of the highest medical credentials in the country. Everyone told me that pain was caused by a different thing and dismissed ideas of other doctors. The confidence with…
That's probably how we'll see AI take over. AI will prescribe and humans will do the manual labor.
Re: I went to 50 different dentists: almost all gave a different diagnosis (1997)
#490My son when 3 had a fall and a few teeth were bent. Went to our local dentist who mostly had a wait and see opinion. But then calls a day later and says they’ve decided they should just come out. Two top front teeth. Would have no top front teeth for years. I went into engineer mode and while I acknowledged I didn’t have domain expertise, I asked questions and probed the whole situation. Very unsatisfactory, meanderi…
>> I’m not a conspiracy nut. I believe in listening to experts (but ultimately making an informed decision). I believe in modern medicine. But that experience shook me and forever changed my trust in the dental industry. Ask anybody who’s experienced a “chronic” illness about the “experts” and they’ll tell you a tale or two. The experts are great until they have a case that is unusual. The don’t have the time or know…
"The experts are great until they have a case that is unusual."
Also the very standard cases, they can mess up very badly.
"The system is at the same time incredible and awful."
The science behind the medicine is awesome, but the standard implementation is horrible and not up to at all, where we could be.