Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought they were cheat codes.
--DRESS means your clothes with fall off.
No, troll, it's actually your skin falls off dead and your organs are injured. It's similar to SJS/TEN.
Acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen
451–460 of 504 posts
Re: Acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen
#452Earlier quoted context omitted.
AIUI one of the many quirks of the US health insurance system is that a lot of people have only minimal cover which doesn't include things like physiotherapy and rehabilitation treatment. That means that they often can't treat a painful condition at source so their only option is to mask the pain with painkillers.
It's worse than that - there is also no job protection. Hurt yourself and miss a few days of work and you are possibly unemployed on top of injured. And then you lose your health insurance, so you can no longer get/afford any treatment. I'm convinced it's designed this way on purpose. Can't have people relaxing, ever. Must extract every ounce of productivity and blood while they're alive.
> there is also no job protection
https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/benefits-leave/fmla
https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/health-plans/cobra
It’s not perfect, but the US isn’t a perfect union either. Healthcare is usually more of working class concern, or for the working age but unemployed, which is not a small risk …
But let’s at least admit where some protections exist.
Re: Acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen
#453Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless you have migraines, that headache is caused by something and you'll be much better taking an anti-allergic, or a sinus cleaner, or whatever else actually solves the underlying issue or make the specific symptom go away. The same goes for muscle aches. There is also specific medicine for them. And you are probably better with an anti-inflammatory for a bump. (It's not normal for cuts to hurt for a long time.)
> that headache is caused by something Thanks for the diagnosis, Dr. Internet Rando. > you'll be much better taking an anti-allergic, or a sinus cleaner, or whatever else actually solves the underlying issue or make the specific symptom go away. You can't even say what I should take. X or Y or... whatever else? That's not helpful at all.
If you don't know what causes a random headache, that's a good reason to ask a doctor.
Re: Acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen
#454Earlier quoted context omitted.
> home-made oral rehydration solution water? EDIT: I see it's a thing. Salt, water and sugar.
Apologies, I could have clarified that (then again my comment already was a wall of text). The body does not absorb water passively but actively, and it's been known for a very long time that water with a bit of salt and sugar is absorbed faster. This has been crucial in reducing (especially child) mortality due to acute fluid loss from diarrhea due to, say, cholera[0]. (I personally find amazing that Robert K. Crane…
Thank you, would upvote twice if I could, I learnt something new and potentially very useful here :-) *bookmarking*
Re: Acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen
#455Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like this is one of those things where Europe and the US are very different, culturally speaking - I've lived in the Netherlands, Germany and now Sweden, and the amount of painkillers used and prescribed here seems much lower than what Americans tell me is normal in the US. Pain a warning signal from the body. It's something one should listen to, not just try to ignore and overrule. If I sprain my ankle it onl…
You're forgetting that when you're sick and hurt yourself in the US you very likely still have to go to work. Doing some quick research, roughly 25% of the US workers don't have any sick time whatsoever, so you gotta take some painkillers and get back to work. If you need to take time off to go to the doctor, you're no longer getting paid, so...a lot of people don't do that and instead hide the pain with painkillers.
I had my gallbladder out on a Wednesday and went back to work on the Monday. Nothing stronger than acetaminophen and ibuprofen. Laparoscopy is amazing.
It was a desk job and my team was great. I didn't even think twice.
Re: Acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen
#456Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with the US system is that it doesn't know what it's trying to be. If you did a socialist system then everything is "free" but possibly slow and expensive on the back end when the government isn't efficient. If you did a libertarian system then everything is cheap but it's caveat emptor because nobody is stopping you from buying morphine for $10 from Amazon. The US system isn't either one. It pretends to…
I think you're trying to apply ideology where it doesn't belong. Nobody on earth would advocate for such extensive spending to facilitate agreement on financing. It's extremely, extremely inefficient. (But it does produce jobs, which makes politicians super horny.) The market also won't assist us, as we can't exactly compete future treatment costs against unknown illnesses. Merely providing emergency rooms and "free…
> Merely providing emergency rooms and "free clinics" will ensure that people only use these services.
Emergency rooms operate by triage. If you're having a heart attack, you're going in right now. If your shoulder has been bothering you for six months, you might have to come back multiple days in a row and spend the whole day waiting before there is a slow enough day that you can be seen. There is then an obvious incentive to go pay a private physician to be seen immediately instead. Free clinics are similar: There are no appointments, it's first come first served, and then most people prefer to pay $100 to schedule an appointment rather than wasting an entire day waiting in a queue, but you still have that option for people with no money.
Emergency rooms are also a natural monopoly because in an actual emergency the primary consideration is which one is closest, which doesn't make for a competitive market. So it makes sense to have the government do that. Whereas non-emergency care (which is the large majority of medical expenses) would allow people to compare prices or make cost trade offs against distance or convenience etc., if we would actually expose people to pricing. For example by requiring price transparency and then having insurance pay the second-lowest price for that service within 100 miles of your location, but then letting you choose where you actually want to go and make up any difference yourself, or choose the lowest cost option instead of the second lowest and then put the difference in your HSA.
> A public option eliminating profit margin seems to at least be sane, and ideally would starve private funding from existence.
It's not clear how a government option that doesn't have taxpayer subsidies would do this any better than a private non-profit. There are many existing non-profit healthcare providers and they don't have meaningfully lower costs than for-profit ones.
The general problem is that "non-profits" and government-operated services still have money flowing through them and "profit" can be extracted in all manner of ways other than paying dividends to shareholders. The officers can just pay themselves high salaries, or whoever is in charge of the budget can take bribes/kickbacks to shovel money in the direction of the contractors or unions paying them off.
Meanwhile the nature of "profit" in a competitive market is largely misunderstood because of accounting differences. If a non-profit wants to buy an MRI machine, they have to take out a loan, and then pay back the loan with interest which they account for as an expense. A for-profit company might get the money to buy it by selling shares to investors, and then paying dividends to the shareholders instead of paying interest on a loan, which goes on the books as "profit" instead of interest expense. But you couldn't just replace them with a non-profit and then lower prices by the amount of "profit" they were making because then they also wouldn't have had private investment and you're back to needing the loan and paying the same money as interest to the bank.
The thing that requires providers to be efficient is competition, because then the ones wasting money or taking bribes have to cover the amount wasted/embezzled by charging more to customers and then the customers don't choose them because they have higher prices. But that's the thing the existing regulatory system goes out of its way to thwart.
Re: Acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen
#457Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Pain a warning signal from the body. It's something one should listen to, not just try to ignore and overrule. If I sprain my ankle it only hurts when I lean on it. Because it's healing. So I don't. Why would headaches or other "inconvenient" pains be different? Pain is also suffering, and there is no virtue in suffering needlessly. Even more importantly, there's also chronic pain, which can severely affect quality…
None of this is in disagreement with my argument and comes across as actively ignoring the part where I explain that I am not advocating to "walk it off". The discussion started in the context of taking painkillers regularly for things like "inconvenient head-aches" without pausing to investigate what causes those headaches. It should be clear from the context that I am not talking about something like people struggl…
We're in violent agreement. My point is, I guess, that the "European way" of foregoing painkillers can be taken too far. And that's actually something that does happen - it's easy to get from from "pain is a warning signal you shouldn't ignore" to "pain shouldn't be suppressed if it's bearable", especially when you hear about dangerous side effects of painkillers. There are definitely people in Europe who think like that, even doctors.
Re: Acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen
#458Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah can confirm. I try to keep it low but then pain lingers for days and cumulatively over the days most probably I took as much as I should have taken in stating few days already.
yeah tried to reserve ibu for sleep and during the day walking as much as possible. I know not everyone feels better while walking, luckily I did.
No, moving definitely works. I can almost predict when my sciatica pain will be coming - usually when I work long hours sitting and don't do enough movement. I struggle to be more active than just going to the gym. I think we - those who suffer from herniated disc and sciatica, need to move much more than those who don't.
Re: Acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen
#459Earlier quoted context omitted.
> that headache is caused by something Thanks for the diagnosis, Dr. Internet Rando. > you'll be much better taking an anti-allergic, or a sinus cleaner, or whatever else actually solves the underlying issue or make the specific symptom go away. You can't even say what I should take. X or Y or... whatever else? That's not helpful at all.
If you don't know what causes a random headache, that's a good reason to ask a doctor.
> If you don't know what causes a random headache
Maybe HN commenters.
Re: Acetaminophen vs. ibuprofen
#460Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like this is one of those things where Europe and the US are very different, culturally speaking - I've lived in the Netherlands, Germany and now Sweden, and the amount of painkillers used and prescribed here seems much lower than what Americans tell me is normal in the US. Pain a warning signal from the body. It's something one should listen to, not just try to ignore and overrule. If I sprain my ankle it onl…
It is a cultural difference. > In my case headaches are usually caused by sleep deprivation causing high sensitivity to external stimuli, muscle tension, dehydration, or some combination of that. So I'll first try to take a nap and/or stick to low-stimuli environments, have a good stretch and/or heated up massage pillow for the neck, and make a quick home-made oral rehydration solution with some salt and sugar. That…
Naps are fine depending on the white collar work, how much is asynchronous, etc. Reasonable accommodations are usually possible as long as it’s not shift work.
Painkillers are an interesting question since we have direct to consumer ads (uncommon globally as it turns out) and for clearly some reasons, we get sicker than other nations independent of how capable medicine is.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/harvard-health-ad-watch-...
https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2...
Sicker is doing some work, and I think the US has such a diversity of health cultures and outcomes, you almost need to do it by zip code, but that’s another topic.
>So what’s the cultural aspect? That for some reason Americans find this preferable to socialized healthcare
Alternative universe where WW2-era employer provided healthcare didn’t emerge, would you wager we would be there now?