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The Hollow Men of Hims

alexkesin.com

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Re: The Hollow Men of Hims

#121

Post by wonderwonder »

Spivak wrote: post #117
wonderwonder wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. You can order a significant variety of antibiotics over the counter / web in the US. I have 2 Z-Paks, a bottle of Amoxicillin and a bottle of Doxycycline sitting in my medical drawer. You can order them legally via US based online pharmacies. If you are an adult you should have the freedom to treat yourself. Freedom does not absolve you of responsibility though. If I mess myself up I have no one to blame but mys…

Could you share some of those sites? I have chronic sinus infections and I'm so tired of having to go to the doctor to get the same antibiotic rx I've gotten 20 times before.

I see no way to DM on this site, so public it is.

No association with it but have used it multiple times.

https://allfamilypharmacy.com/

Mods if this is not ok, my apologies

Re: The Hollow Men of Hims

#122

Post by thebigman433 »

zdragnar wrote: post #103
parpfish wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a very vocal, puritanical anti-semaglutide crowd that thinks using the drug is a way of subverting the moral order. “You have poor willpower, you’re SUPPOSED to be fat as a punishment!” They don’t care that it helps people stick to their healthy diets and get better. They need these people to bear the stigma of the gluttony.

This is not a charitable take of the critics. If you go on a fad diet, lose weight, then gain it back when you stop, well, you haven't really lost anything other than time. If you go on semaglutide, lose weight, then gain it all back when you stop, you're out thousands of dollars, I'm out money when my insurance premium goes up to support the new expensive drugs, and you might have permanent health complications (rar…

A year after quitting semaglutide, 20% of people maintained their achieved weight. But, some 44% regained weight. Of that 44%, most (59% of them) still had improved weight: their weights had not fully rebounded to their pre-semaglutide level! Possibly even more importantly, the remaining 36% continued losing weight, either mildly (47%) or majorly (53%)

https://archive.md/Wsuoz

Re: The Hollow Men of Hims

#123

Post by anon291 »

I know it's funny because it's boner pills, but realistically, the article does not paint as bad a picture of hims as it is attempting to. The various rules they make to skirt the law seem silly, but are really the result of over-regulation. The simple truth about hims algorithmic care is that the vast majority of medical care could be given this way. This was a major revelation to me when I had a medical question that I asked through Amazon's online doctor platform (off-insurance) for just $30. The system asked me several quiz style questions. It determined exactly what was the problem (because again... most primary care is really not that hard). It gave a suggestion of what I'd probably get from the doctor. It sent all the details, including its suggestions to a board-certified medical doctor, who reviewed it within an hour, and then chatted directly with me via a secure messaging site. She agreed the plan suggested by the computer made sense. She asked a few more questions. Within 10 minutes, amazon pharmacy had my order and I received the medication the next day. I even received follow up care.

Honestly, this was way better than using insurance for a physician visit. Half the time you go to the doctor, you already know what they're going to tell you.

I could be wrong, but I believe this system was first made legal during COVID. Despite all the pearl clutching, it works exceptionally well, and should have been legal earlier.

Re: The Hollow Men of Hims

#124

Post by conradev »

binarymax wrote: post #13
jackdeansmith wrote: post #7

>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.

I want something like the Amazon Prime of healthcare, but the Amazon part is remarkably persistent: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/patient-safety-concerns-ar...

Re: The Hollow Men of Hims

#125

Post by CSMastermind »

alphazard wrote: post #28

Given the healthcare bureaucracy in America, it's hard to find anything for the consumer to be mad about here other than the quality of the medications. The intended audience of this article must be pharma and healthcare investors, not consumers. As with most products, companies need a way to make promises to consumers about what's in the products. The only way the consumers will believe those promises is if the cons…

I see a lot of complaints about "the healthcare bureaucracy in America".

And I don't doubt that it exists. But I will say the limited number of times I've needed to interact with the system it was surprisingly cheap and downright pleasant.

The only negative experiences I've had is interacting with government run health systems (the VA).

Re: The Hollow Men of Hims

#126

Post by gwern »

mingus88 wrote: post #9
scifi wrote: post #4

The 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.

> This style of writing is a welcome change from all the AI slop or self promoting blogs out there.

Dude. This is AI slop. And quite obviously so! You think all those EM DASHes are there naturally? Or the constant use of reversal? No one writes like that. (Even the people who love em-dashes and make a point of using the Unicode point will change it up more than that, rather than using it like a metronome.) Even if there wasn't that adrafinil referral URL giving it away (which incidentally tells you that OP wasn't doing all his own research but relying on the search plugin to compile a report he could spin), at this point you should recognize the 4o style.

This just doesn't sound like the normal ChatGPT because the author prompted ChatGPT to make it as invective and rhetoric and axgrinding as possible (or possibly, just went through and heavily edited a more neutral ChatGPT draft but I doubt that is responsible for the bizarre analogies or rhetoric like the hot dog thing).

So, a good example of the "don't worry about seeing AI slop on HN; worry about when you stop seeing AI slop on HN" evolution. Stripping referrers or avoiding EM DASHes is, after all, easy to do...

Also, top keks:

>> It is worth noting that the culture that produced Hims—Silicon Valley's peculiar blend of messianic self-regard and algorithmic thinking—has convinced itself that traditional gatekeepers are inherently suspect, that disruption is inherently virtuous, and that the phrase "move fast and break things" applies as beneficently to human bodies as it does to software systems.

Re: The Hollow Men of Hims

#127

Post by kstrauser »

addicted wrote: post #69
n8cpdx wrote: post #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 th…

I'm confused. An insurance company cannot reject a prescription. They can only reject paying for it. So if you're paying for it with Hims why wouldn't you be willing to pay for the medication the doctor prescribes to you if the insurance company is refusing to pay for it?

> An insurance company cannot reject a prescription. They can only reject paying for it.

That's a distinction without meaning. Say an insurer won't pay for cancer treatments. Although they're not technically telling you that you can't have the treatment, for all practical purposes they absolutely are (unless you're so rich you can eat the cost).

The article talks about Semaglutide, which is $750/month from a traditional pharmacy after UnitedHealthcare rejects paying for it, or $300/month from Hims. If you believe the medicine's substantially the same between those sources, why wouldn't you take the $5400/year out of pocket discount?

Re: The Hollow Men of Hims

#128

Post by Brian_K_White »

jrflowers wrote: post #31
Spooky23 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with your position is simple: where does it come from? The legit path for compounded semaglutide is buying up Rybelsus, impacting the supply for diabetics. Compounding pharmacies are notoriously shady, and are likely using grey market materials from questionable sources.

Can you give some specific examples of compounding pharmacies buying up Rybelsus or using grey market GLP-1

Why would this product be different from any other product?

Re: The Hollow Men of Hims

#129

Post by rsync »

This is what I was saying here, speaking of pinpointed, personalized advertisements:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44318773

"What to do with this massive infrastructure and billions of dollars of investment and workers employed by this global machine?"

... and that is where gambling and vaping (and ED pills and hair thinning medication) come in.

I'm skeptical that the (personalized, aggregated data, pinpointed advertising machine) works for things of value and substance that require thought and nuance to purchase.

As a consumer of online advertising for over 25 years, I have found much of it to be a grift.

But if I were selling nicotine pouches ... or weightloss aids ... or access to gambling ...

I'll bet it finally delivers as promised.

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