I might be crazy, but I am more sympathetic to Hims after reading this than I was before.
Up until the part where people couldn’t cancel their subscriptions or got charged out of the blue
The Hollow Men of Hims
11–20 of 277 posts
Re: The Hollow Men of Hims
#12Semaglutide / GLP-1 compounding is not limited to just Hims. Lot's of pharmacies do it. The manufacturer (Novo Nordisk) charges 5x-10x for the exact same thing. The author calls the GLP-1s used in compounding "Chinese Knockoffs", but offers no evidence of quality control problems, and is instead relying on the reader's prejudices.
GLP-1 drugs may be a game-changer for obesity and diabetes, the same way that cholesterol (statin) drugs have greatly improved heart health. Hopefully reversing a long trend of increasing waistbands in developed / developing countries. Unfortunately, America will pay the highest price (including Medicare). I'm all for anything that makes them cheaper, including the many compounding pharmacies currently exploiting the loophole the author takes issue with.
Re: The Hollow Men of Hims
#13>The real tragedy is not that Hims exists, but that it works so perfectly. Every day, thousands of people choose their compounded weight-loss drugs over FDA-approved alternatives, their combination ED pills over established single-ingredient treatments, their algorithmic consultations over actual medical care. They make these choices not because the products are better, but because the entire experience has been opti…
It’s possible for both you and the article to be right.
The system sucks, but Hims are also terrible, and medical care should not be like Amazon prime.
Re: The Hollow Men of Hims
#14The explosive growth of Hims and other side-channel healthcare businesses (using this model -- telehealth combined with compounded meds) is entirely due to the "legitimate" healthcare system's complete and total failure to serve patients' needs.
You can maybe talk about the hollow men of Novo and Lilly, who colluded with PBMs and insurers for most of a decade to push the cost of insulin analogues into the stratosphere, taking billions in profit while people died in agony rationing insulin. (in horrible agony -- blood turning into acid until brain death)
Re: The Hollow Men of Hims
#15> Regulatory arbitrage disguised as innovation, dressed in the fashionable vocabulary of patient empowerment while serving no master but the quarterly earnings call.
No masters except the patients that are literally being empowered to make choices about their medical care and are paying a substantial premium (in many cases) to do so.
I would happily be empowered by my doctor and UnitedHealthcare instead, but sadly that’s not on the table.
Try getting tretinoin from a real doctor; I’ve been written prescriptions multiple times, never once succeeded in actually getting it, because insurance is a fucking nightmare. And I’m not on a cheap plan.
Also note that the compounded semaglutide is superior because it comes in adjustable dose vials, unlike the pens. But I’m sure the author would claim that taking a smaller dose to reduce side effects is “a dangerous and unproven approach to medicine that puts patient lives on the line purely for profit”.
Re: The Hollow Men of Hims
#16The explosive growth of Hims and other side-channel healthcare businesses (using this model -- telehealth combined with compounded meds) is entirely due to the "legitimate" healthcare system's complete and total failure to serve patients' needs. You can maybe talk about the hollow men of Novo and Lilly, who colluded with PBMs and insurers for most of a decade to push the cost of insulin analogues into the stratospher…
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Re: The Hollow Men of Hims
#17Semaglutide / GLP-1 compounding is not limited to just Hims. Lot's of pharmacies do it. The manufacturer (Novo Nordisk) charges 5x-10x for the exact same thing. The author calls the GLP-1s used in compounding "Chinese Knockoffs", but offers no evidence of quality control problems, and is instead relying on the reader's prejudices. GLP-1 drugs may be a game-changer for obesity and diabetes, the same way that cholester…
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Re: The Hollow Men of Hims
#18The writing is hard to engage with—possibly trying to be funny, but it comes off as overly antagonistic. Phrases like “—presumably in a conference room with aggressively modern furniture—” feel distracting and undermine the point.
I agree. I enjoy off the wall and humorous writing usually. This article is pretty bad. Somehow it made me want to like the subject they were trying to eviscerate. I wouldn't want to be too harsh though; at least they did write something! Perhaps I'll read another article by this same person in the future and find they've improved their tone.
Re: The Hollow Men of Hims
#19The writing is hard to engage with—possibly trying to be funny, but it comes off as overly antagonistic. Phrases like “—presumably in a conference room with aggressively modern furniture—” feel distracting and undermine the point.
I had the opposite take, actually. I had to think about it for a sec and suddenly, “oh, right. Novo nordisk == Danish == Scandinavian design” cute. This style of writing is a welcome change from all the AI slop or self promoting blogs out there. It’s a personal touch without making it all about the author. Long form articles with some humor used to be all I wanted to read on the web.
I think it is potentially still AI prose, perhaps just well-edited or working from a good prompt. Aside from using quite a few em dashes and being relentless in shoving cleverness in, there's a link to Wikipedia with a `?utm_source=chatgpt.com` in there.
To be clear, whether or not it is AI prose is beside the point in my opinion. I think this piece is informative and funny but could be edited down significantly, regardless of how it was produced.
Re: The Hollow Men of Hims
#20This buried lede is really the core of the article: > They make these choices not because the products are better, but because the entire experience has been optimized to feel more like shopping and less like confronting the mortality and vulnerability that define the human condition. This is what disruption looks like when applied to the oldest human needs: not improvement, but the illusion of improvement And contra…
OneMedical (now owned by Amazon) provides a version of this that also connects you with a general practitioner doctor who you're able to see in your area. They additionally have telehealth-style prescription requests in the app, but you end up with the FDA approved version coming from Amazon pharmacy for $5/month (on top of the $200/year for OneMedical), or for $cheap at your regular pharmacy. A++ would recommend.
However, when I get referrals from OneMedical to specialists like eg sleep apnea, those 3rd party specialists usually have like 8 month waiting lists. So, back to Hims-style online-only providers for that sort of thing.