Maybe you just need to get some sun

Wait, so you're telling me my doctors won't actually break into my residence illegally and discover that my wife is cheating with me with an opossum, making me contract a rare amoeba that can only be cured by injecting my spinal cord with pastrami?

Best we can do is have your doctor cripplingly addicted to vicodin
- sigh
  . . . Fine.
- getaloada this fancy pants with his primary care physician
Yeah it was a bit unbelievable how they would get involved with the patients personal life. I worked with a guy a while ago who I was very confident was cheating on his wife. I didn't call his wife to tell her or tell him to knock it off.B
Pretty sure it's lupus
- It's never lupus.

In the US medical system, the people are represented by two separate but equally important groups: the HMO’s, who perpetrate crime, and the pharmaceutical companies that profit from it. These are their stories.

The craziest thing that demonstrates how shitty our healthcare system is, is that they made a goddamn movie 25 years ago about a guy holding people hostage in a children's hospital at gunpoint to get his child a surgery when payment was denied and nobody found that premise outlandish.

The movie was generally underrated, sadly.
- Did you sit down and watch the whole movie and not just the dramatic moments as YouTube clips? Outside of a few good Denzel moments, the movie was just awful in terms of dialogue, pacing, and blunt 'foreshadowing'
- John Q was not a good film.
An adult friend made me watch that as a kid. I do not like thrillers, and I have cardiophobia (I can't look at, listen to, or be too aware of biological hearts), which is very relevant to that movie. Also I was too young and wide-eyed to appreciate those kinds of systemic issues. So that was not a fun time, and I won't forget it.

Or if you're a woman, they won't bother trying and tell you you're imagining things. Because a medical degree can't cure being a jackass.

You have sudden onset chest pains and lethargy? Well I see your boobs are nicely sized but the rest of you could lose weight, I prescribe you with diet and exercise and diagnose you with anxiety because you thought you needed to come in. I can prescribe you both control if you continue to be anxious.

I believe the hospital in House was also a college and the cases were for study purposes. Patients getting treated was just a side effect of the experimentation...

And there was an oft-maligned "clinic" where stupid people would go to be harassed by House when he was being punished with working a shift there.
Yes. Basically, doctor House had enough of a reputation to justify having a whole team.

I had a couple seizures several years ago. Full on grand mal with an ER trip and all that fun.

The response from doctors has consistently been “yeah, sometimes people just have seizures.” They did CT scans, didn’t see anything abnormal and aren’t really interested in investigating more. Solution was that I’m just going to take anticonvulsants for the rest of my life.

Sorry to hear that. Are you better now?
- Yeah - as long as I’m on Keppra I don’t have them.
  It was just terrifying to wake up out of nowhere being carried by EMTs, spend a day in the hospital, be told “yeah idk go see a neurologist” and then just have to figure it out? Follow up with a neurologist was “yeah sometimes it happens, just don’t drive for the next six months.”

Don't forget "you're over 30, your body just does that now"

There is a lot of truth in that though haha.
But yeah, it sucks seeing stories of people getting told that it is just growing old, while they have a chronic illness.
I mean, this but unironically. There's a lot of muscular-skeletal issues that you get from... sitting in an office chair for 20 years. Or not getting tons of physical activity for most of your adult life. Or various deterioration of this or that bodily function from over/under-utilization or simple wear-and-tear.
Ask a Sports Medicine doctor what to do about compounded injuries and most of what you'll get is "We can replace the part that's broken" or "Stop doing the thing that's causing you injury". After that, there's no miracle cure that's going to make decades of strains and bruises and stress injuries just vanish.
- I've sustained far more injuries sitting at a desk than I ever did as a soldier, or manual laborer.
I got "don't worry, it should go away by the time you're 30"
I was 19 at the time, and it did not

Nichojou?
- I haven't seen it (don't watch almost any anime), but I tracked it down. Here's the link timed to the start of the conversation: Azumanga Daioh Episode 4 Subbed - Pool Pool Pool (HQ)

...... I mean, have you tried diet, exercise, and sleeping more? For more than a week or two?

Outside of a drama TV show where a 1 in a billion case shows up once a week, that's usually a good start.

Not sure if you're in community with many women or POC that feel comfortable speaking to you about these things, but VERY basic issues aren't even being looked into. PCOS and cancer are two common ones. Things can vary place to place, but it seems like a pretty universal experience in my circles.
- I mean I'm not a woman or PoC and I still get that same advice from doctors.
  And as someone that's worked in healthcare before, a lot, if not most, of what people go to doctors for is trivial or psychosomatic, so if they did a full range of tests for everyone that says they get headaches, then people with genuine conditions would be in an even worse place as they need to wait for resources to free up.
- That is a very good point.
- Fun fact, both pcos and cancer have strong links to obesity as a major aggravating factor.
I did, it made my condition worse, thanks.
- I sincerely doubt that, but if you'd like to elaborate I'll listen.

I lost 80 pounds and my stomach still hurts a ton when ever I eat, what's the next step doctor?

Doc: *surprised Pikachu face *

"Uhh cigarettes are bad for you?"
- I was told by a doctor at 12 that I should never drink soda, caffeine, alcohol, or smoke to try to reduce stomach pain.
  Also I'm a male so it can't be period pains or pregnancy.

My, at the time unknown, genetic heart defect was treated with "lose weight, fatty."

My, at the time unknown degenerative collagen coding defect was also treated as "lose weight fatty", I lost weight, without even trying, because it turns out collagen is an important tissue structure in a functional digestive system. I lost weight too fast, I lost a lot of lean muscle as well as fat.
Turns out muscle is important for holding your joints together if you don't have quality collagen to do that job.
Suddenly the real cause of my symptoms was evident, but I never got an apology for years of misdiagnosis and being blamed for my own illness.
Fun fact, one of the many things I was told to do as part of proper treatment was gain weight! (albeit, muscle weight)
Now I'm starting to get cardiopulmonary symptoms, which makes sense, your heart and lungs also have collagen. I don't have a specialist at the moment, and recently had to find a new GP because my old GP said I need to "exercise more" to prevent my new symptoms... Even though my physical therapist says my level of activity is more than enough and if my lungs aren't physically structured properly, no amount of cardio workouts will help me breathe properly.

I actually know people who died because they had cancer, but the doctor kept refusing to do actual examinations and just said "Oh uhh... just get more potassium or something..."

Not bothering to look further until it was too late.. It's very sad

Sleeping more isn’t always possible, but if you haven’t tried diet and exercise, that should be your first move.

People think that question is not taking their disease seriously, but it’s the other way around. People don’t take diet and exercise seriously enough. They’re ultra powerful determiners of health, including mental health.

Binging Chubbyemu vids last night sure makes it seem like that's not exactly true... There are far too many that begin with "presenting to the ER visibly fucked, the doctor just tells them it's anxiety and to stop being a little bitch about it. But it wasn't anxiety and they were not, in fact, a little bitch."

You forgot the inflection. "Pre👆🏻SENting to the emergency room...."

I am not doing well at all healthwise due to a now possibly diagnosed illness. A few weeks ago, I was at the Mayo Clinic, one of the most prestigious hospitals in the country for rare illnesses, the sort of place you would expect House to work.

I was there ten days and saw three doctors for about an hour each. As I said, it's now possibly diagnosed and, therefore, there's a possible route to go down, but that and a bill were all I got.

I bet those lazy doctors didn't even break into your house and go through your things.
- We have a big dog. Probably scared off the Australian guy.
That's generally all House's patients get

It's probably lupus anyway.

"Let's do some imaging on you that will cost you hundreds of dollars and pay me thousands"

Alternatively

"Have you considered that you're faking it?"

Bit of an ignorant take honestly. US medical system is horrible but we absolutely have some of the finest and most advanced teaching hospitals and medical research centers in the world if you're fortunate enough to end up in their care. Mayo clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Massachusetts General, UCLA Health, UC Davis Medical Center, Johns Hopkins Medical Center, Mount Sinai Hospital, the list goes on.

House MD takes place in a fictitious teaching hospital in Princeton, NJ, of Princeton University fame. It is an extremely wealthy area and the reputation and prestige of the hospital is going to be far more important than what the patient can pay.

Also though, no hospital can legally refuse care if you aren't stable, they might just not do much for you other than stabilize you enough to discharge you so you can die somewhere else.

It was never presented as representing a typical patient experience.

He did have quite a few patients who very, very clearly couldn't afford what a hospital would charge to put up with his bullshit.
- It was in many ways an idealized teaching hospital. A lot of episodes had "C" plots about House's shenanigans in the free clinic.
See my post above about the Mayo Clinic. I recently got back from there. House it was not.
- I was treated at Stanford. Same here. Our system sucks donkey nuts

Most of his patients are transferred to him because the original doctor did all they knew how, it's either Goto House or try some ginseng in your tea.

Good luck finding doctors bold enough to admit they have no idea and need help...
- That is the job of general practitioner. Solve the issues with easy solutions and diagnosis. Send everything else to a specialist.
He took patients based on personal interest. The only way to get to his team was to have symptoms intersting enough to get his attention.

There are a bunch of House, MD scenes where he's doing boring consults and we get the "Stop eating shellfish if you're allergic to shellfish" bits and gags.

I had, probably still have, a weird medical 'condition' that US military doctors and British doctors couldn't figure out. Would have been neat to have a team of smarty pants working on the case.

At least in the US they exist. They're called functional medicine doctors. They'll charge a ton and they don't accept insurance, but they'll typically keep at your issue until they figure out what it is and have some sort of treatment recommendations.

It's far from only in the US. In my experience, hospitals in Germany are far worse in this regard. It depends greatly on who is getting paid how much for what. The US is far better for this, but unfortunately it is not affordable for most.

Imo, you're dead wrong. Doctors in the US have no incentive to actually cure anything. They spend minimal time with patients and try to cram as many appointments into a day as possible. I'm the type of person that only goes to the Dr if there's something seriously wrong. I had an ear issue. Took 3 months to see an ENT after multiple failed urgent care visits and an ER visit. The audiologist (not even the Dr) is the one who pointed out I had something clogging my ear canal after multiple Drs and PAs said it was fine. She thankfully got the Dr to pull out a big ole wad of dead skin and wax. Dr says it was likely infected at some point, and my ear made all that dead skin, and that caused that. Have a follow up appointment scheduled which he said I could cancel if the pain went away. The pain went away temporarily, but came back. Follow up is with a completely different dude, and he tells me my ear is fine, and I need to see someone about "pain management". It's very clearly not fine because I'm still seeing you doc. I don't need 600 mg ibuprofen tablets, I need my ear to not hurt.
My theory is that either the ear is still infected, and the drops I had weren't penetrating the ear canal due to the big ole wad that was blocking my ear, or there's still a bit more wad blocking the ear that they need to pull out. I'm ready to self prescribe my old eardrops which I still have leftover to see if it works.
Doctors in the US love to kick the can down the road. "Oh, I couldn't possibly diagnose that, you need to see a specialist. Let me give you a referral." Then you see the next dickhead who says oh actually u need this other specialist, let me give you a referral.
I'm not in some podunk town either. This is a world renowned hospital I'm talking about. Our healthcare system in the US is absolute ass.
- Sorry about your ear problems. That sounds bad and a terrible thing to live with.
  The US heathcare systems have many problems as you pointed out. I also am well aware of them as I lived there for 30 years both with and without insurance. The only thing that I can give is my lived experience in both systems. The problems that you pointed out among many others exist in most health care systems globally. Despite and including these problems in my experience the US still gives better care. That may be hard to hear (no pun intended) but the grass is not always greener.
  Now don't get me wrong. I prefer the system here in Germany but not because it's better, but because it is available to everyone. People here don't go bankrupt with medical debt like in the US.
The US is far better for this
YMMV. American doctors are an absolute crap shoot in terms of expertise and bedside manner. For any kind of surgery, you really need to shop around and interview and get referrals, because there's a real chance you end up with a guy who has half a dozen lawsuits pending for malpractice if you're not careful.
- True - but this is also true everywhere I have been too.
I have alopecia and every dermatologist I visited was either unwilling or unable to help me. It sucks to be a Kassenpatient
- I assume that you are german? I have experienced similar here with dermatologists but for allergies. I went to 4 different allergists over a 8 month period to simply get tested to be able to get an epipen which could potentially save my life. This in the US took one next day visit with a doctor. Later (in the US) I saw specialists that put a lot of research into my allergies and time and attention into it. I got nothing here in Germany.
  As mentioned before, despite this, I would rather support the german system though. It has its problems like everywhere, but it is at least available to everyone at more affordable prices.

I mean its like being in tech support. Losing weight and not eating shit is the equivalent of "Have you tried turning it off and on again" it should be obvious but its not.

And sadly, it doesn't solve all problems. But it's a good place to start.
Which is a lazy response when actually trying to troubleshoot.
- No, it is important to check the easy outs. If you act like the issue is solved or communicate the expectation you can be a harmful dick though.

Cost money/time to cure people. Cheaper to just manage conditions.

Tell that to the doctor that said I had a blocked salivary gland and to "just suck on some sour candy". I had a tooth abscess (I even told the doctor that) and ended up in the ER for nearly a week. Costed insurance 28 thousand dollars for a procedure that normally costs a couple hundred at most (tooth pull).
- Costed insurance 28 thousand dollars for a procedure that normally costs a couple hundred at most (tooth pull).
  Would a doctor do a tooth pull, or a dentist? I don't think it's a reasonable expectation to expect a doctor to pull a tooth, but instead a dentist would do so.
  Also, one thing you have to realize is that they don't look at the cost just at the atomic per incident level, but they look at it through the whole life of the customer/patient.
  They play the odds, and they do literal risk management, when deciding how to spend money and when to spend money, specially for big money spending like operations.
  So in your case it might have been a matter of a risk management decision, of the odds of you getting better without having to have the tooth pulled and spending the money to do so would be good, but you just got unlucky.

In fairness, they're the last reaort, so would happen after the "have you tried meditation?" Doesn't work.

The reality is this varies highly not just by individual doctor but by doctor group.

And whether or not they’re willing to consult a specialist while you’re in a hospital.

Spoiler: they lose money if they do this because only so much is available to be paid out for each patient. Second spoiler: sometimes seeing a specialist while hospitalized means getting transferred 100+ miles away to another hospital because that hospital doesn’t have any of that specialist available. Third spoiler: Level 1 hospitals are few and far between (they have everything).

Spoiler: having to see said specialist is likely out of network and therefore not covered by your insurance, leaving you with a massive bill.

"That'll be $200, please."

Here’s the zero you’re missing: 0
- I found the other missing zero: 0
Those are 1990s numbers (yes, really). Now, add a zero and some change.
- I think my visit seeking prophylactics when I was exposed to HIV (and the doctor just said, "nah, don't worry about it, I'm not prescribing you") was $1500 for the doctor, $1500 to the hospital... God damn that was a shock.