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The Hollow Men of Hims

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Re: The Hollow Men of Hims

#161

Post by nikkwong »

maxerickson wrote: post #111
nikkwong wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could this possibly work out for her financially? To make 120k a year, she would have to be doing this with.. 200 patients; and I think the average GP makes a bit more than that in the US. That doesn't like a good bargain on her end.

Not paying someone to chase insurance saves something anyway. I'm at about 1 hour per year with my GP (I guess they can be spending additional time on notes or whatever, but I don't think it's much).

I guess I see this as somewhat different. These people are proactively choosing to maintain a relationship with a physician for an elective $50/month. I think the type of patient who wants a type of this relationship is the type who is going to solicit more than a single appointment per year; otherwise, why not just use what the current system gives us?

I could see something like this being useful for me; I'm constantly nagging my physician for different drugs I am triaging for a condition I'm dealing with. But, in that case, I wouldn't be the ideal patient for the physician. I wish this kind of thing could work, but I'm not sure how I see it working in practice, unless you move up market and charge more.

Re: The Hollow Men of Hims

#162

Post by fallous »

parpfish wrote: post #106
genocidicbunny wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a little of column A, little of column B, but in a mixed way. A lot of doctor visits for basic health issues are ones that can be dealt with over a phone or video call. Routine stuff like updating your medicines, changing dosages, showing a bruise or dealing with a mild fever don't require you to be physically present at the doctor's office. Having to deal with insurance, scheduling, waiting times, driving to th…

I always lol at “reduce stress” as medical advice. May as well tell depressed people to “work on your attitude, turn that frown upside down!” If people could just “reduce stress” on a whim, they would. Having a doctor tell you reduce stress will actually increase stress.

After having a stress-induced LAD heart attack at the age of 46, my cardiologist gave me the "you need to reduce stress" line and I responded with "Oh, so you're not going to send me a bill for that stent in order to help me reduce my stress?" Apparently he believed that my heart could handle the stress of that bill after all.

Re: The Hollow Men of Hims

#163

Post by jjcob »

nocoiner wrote: post #44
mingus88 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Up until the part where people couldn’t cancel their subscriptions or got charged out of the blue

I hate subscriptions and dark patterns and the like as much as anyone, but I am not sure putting a six-month pause on your subscription and getting billed in month 7 is “out of the blue.”

WTF? Why offer a "pause" on your subscription at all? The only reason to do that is to trick customers. If the company was honest, they'd get confirmation before resuming the subscription.

I hate that companies use sleazy practices like this all the time, and then people are like "well it's your fault for not reading the fine print".

Re: The Hollow Men of Hims

#164

Post by [deleted] »

recursivecaveat wrote: post #157
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doctors make $20k a month or more. That's 420+ patients at $50/m. Doesn't seem feasible to know them all personally and deeply. Other revenue would be needed.

It is totally feasible and not uncommon for a family doctor to have 2000+ patients. Young healthy people can go years without interacting with the medical system, and when they do it's often some thing that barely involves their doc. I mean their doc doesn't know them personally then, but they have no problems worth surfacing clearly so why do they need to? The limiting factor really is the quantity of seniors and pe…

[deleted]

Re: The Hollow Men of Hims

#165

Post by sshine »

in_cahoots wrote: post #136
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doctors make $20k a month or more. That's 420+ patients at $50/m. Doesn't seem feasible to know them all personally and deeply. Other revenue would be needed.

420 young, healthy patients probably see the doctor 2x a year at most. That's less than 20 visits a week for the doctor. And as soon as you become unhealthy you are passed along to a specialist or dropped. You're paying for the bedside manner, not the medicine.

I’m 39 and I see my doctor once a year, at most. This year I had a urinary thing. Last year and the year before that I had a rash. The year before that I didn’t go. For all of my twenties I went three times. She still remembers me just fine, asking how is my CrossFit doing.

I see my wife’s doctor more often than my own because he is also our newborn son’s doctor.

They both have thousands of patients. The waiting rooms mostly have elderly, parents with their newborns and obese people.

Re: The Hollow Men of Hims

#166

Post by jjcob »

wonderwonder wrote: post #45
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.

These people should be firmly ignored. I am very open with my drug use. If anyone objects I have labs that I will happily compare to anyone's and I am in better shape than 95% of 20 year olds. There should be no stigma associated with being the master and commander of your own body and health choices.

Why are you taking testosterone?

Re: The Hollow Men of Hims

#167

Post by ryandrake »

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.

Yea the US healthcare system is truly, truly awful, but that does not justify a turn to supplements, quackery, faith healers and witch doctors. The fact that people are turning towards these things should be a wake up call to the medical system, but then again the medical system misses wake up calls over and over…

Re: The Hollow Men of Hims

#168

Post by jjcob »

zdragnar wrote: post #138
lotsofpulp wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and you might have permanent health complications (rare though they might be). Does obesity have permanent health complications and cost you extra in premiums?

There are other options for addressing obesity than "semaglutide or nothing".

Yeah, but they don't work for most people.

For example, I could say, just start running/cycling/swimming if you want to lose weight. It's really easy! If you slowly work up to working out 5 hours a week, and keep at it, your obesity will probably disappear.

However, most people won't be able to do that, because it's boring, takes a lot of time, and they will stop sooner or later. There are some success stories of people who stuck with it and lost 50kg, but these stories are so rare that they are noteworthy.

Taking daily meds on the other hand is something that most people manage to do just fine.

Re: The Hollow Men of Hims

#169

Post by ryandrake »

zdragnar wrote: post #102
hammock wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safe and effective. Side effects are very rare and are usually limited to soreness at the site of injection. Recommend everyone who is recommended semaglutide by a relevant authority, to get it. The obesity epidemic is a national security concern

I don't think the question was whether semaglutide was safe, but whether the version that Hims sells is safe. That includes things like being free from contaminants, stability of the compound, etc.

> I don't think the question was whether semaglutide was safe, but whether the version that Hims sells is safe.

Don’t forget “effective” too. If you just make the bar “safety” then you are accepting sugar pills as medicine for whatever condition. You should need to prove both safety AND effectiveness.

Re: The Hollow Men of Hims

#170

Post by kbenson »

turnsout wrote: post #39
ggm-at-algebras wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am unsure why you have been down voted because fundamentally your point is correct. Health is a fully regulated space, and no entity should be supplying medical products without adherence to requirements appropriate to their role. Compounding GLP-1 seems to me to be in the higher bar space.

[dead]

More likely your initial comment was downvoted because it provides little additional context and makes a claim without support, as if it's self evident. Comments such as that rarely do well on complex topics. My own rule of thumb is that if I'm stating something as fact and I'm writing a single sentence, it's likely a low effort and low usefulness comment that is unlikely to be beneficial to the conversation.

Your comment immediately above this was likely flagged because of your inflammatory accusations and assumptions about why your were downvoted, and IMO shows a alack of introspection about possible reasons as to why you were downvoted. Much better to ask why than to throw out accusations, at least if your goal is to have a useful discussion or learn something (bot of which require some level of assuming good faith to others here).

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