Hacker News Reader

Comment by juskrey | Hacker News Reader

So you WERE in the high risk group after all, you can't advice anyone out of the risk group to start using unnecessary medical procedures.

View on HN

"Don't take medical advice from strangers on the Internet." is an important rule, but "Get a yearly physical." is hardly controversial or high-risk advice, eh what?

The annual physical exam as it is currently understood by most patients and performed by many physicians is actually quite controversial. It has become more of a just-in-case tradition with little evidence for its benefits. The best approach is to consult the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and follow its screening recommendations: https://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/

Well... shut my mouth. :-)

It's not controversial, but not many people receive blood tranfusions with hep c in them.

For that reason, when I originally read his post, I thought that he contracted it just by walking down the street, seriously

I suspect that unless you are a medical doctor or researcher on the cutting edge reading this you have no idea if you are in a high risk group for a disease.

The field of medicine is advancing so quickly that most people’s “common sense intuition” about what is high risk and what isn’t is likely to be very misleading.

They probably didn't realize they were in the high risk group until the diagnosis since the transfusion was so long ago. Even just talking to a doctor about screening tests can still be helpful since they will likely ask "have you ever received a blood transfusion" if you are asking about Hep C.

The original post was about covered preventative measures. They're not "unnecessary medical procedures", otherwise insurances would get rid of their obligation to pay for them. They don't advertise them a lot, which is the only thing OP did.

Therefore: Check what your insurance (and/or local governance) considers essential preventative care and discuss with a professional which of these make sense for you. Then go and do it: it's important enough that some bean counter wasn't able to remove it from your plan as unnecessary medical procedure and it's already budgeted.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com