Hacker News Reader

Comment by rmellow | Hacker News Reader

In the US I presume?

Canadians have a harder time...

In Canada/Ontario, you have to convince your doctor to give you a cholesterol test, e.g. family history. It won't be done preventively [1].

Even if you manage to get tested, if you're under 40 the doctor won't care and there will be no followup.

[1] https://exechealth.ca/ontario-drops-annual-physicals/

View on HN

Meh. Might be an American thing, if you watch TV or news the images of persons will be constantly telling you to ask your doctor about this, consult a medical professional before this other activity they advertise, and oh you gotta see a dentist every six months. Just demand creation, better just to get a blood-pressure test when you do see a doctor and a cholesterol test based on the result.

To be fair, all the ad revenue for pharma products on American television networks whose parents happen to own a news network also do a great job of building leverage against the pharma companies ever being investigated too deeply.

You can have perfectly normal blood pressure and high cholesterol FWIW

A test in the US < $50 and is easy to schedule without having a doctor involved at LabCore or similar. Is that an option in CA?

There are private clinics one can become a member of, but this is extremely uncommon and most people don't know it's an option.

Costs upwards of $3,000 annually.

Only 3,000? chuckles in American

You can go to quest diagnostics or labscorb and order yourself a test for under 200$ (no insurance needed) that would do an entire panel on you. I did this and then called a teledoc for like 40$ (copay) and had them go over hte results with me. It's pretty sweet.

> called a teledoc for like 40$ (copay)

So, more like $7400 annually [0], plus a $40 copay, discounting whatever other health care you needed in the year.

[0] https://www.kff.org/report-section/ehbs-2020-section-6-worke...

If you make 100K a year in Canada you pay $29,986 in taxes of which about a third goes to healthcare, so $10000 annually and you still won't get tested preventatively.

The difference is that the US cost is true whether you're wealthy or poor (above a certain margin). In Canada, if you make the median household income of $35k, you presumably pay proportionally less (or even less than that; I can't be bothered to look up the progressive taxation margins) in taxes, so $3500 max.

That's interesting pricing. I just did some blood tests at Quest Labs w/o a Dr and it ran me $200

You got a cholesterol test and only a cholesterol test? That was what the parent comment is about. Tests vary a lot by test. LabCorp states their prices very clearly.

Walgreens also has cholesterol tests for ~30$ https://news.walgreens.com/press-center/news/walgreens-intro...

I read the comment wrong. I thought they meant a full test battery not just a cholesterol test.

In Quebec at least, a doctor's prescription is required for all blood tests even at private labs.

Crazy how different it is vs the States - check out for instance what you can get immediately at this pretty popular chain: https://www.anylabtestnow.com/general-health/

Hundreds of different ones. Granted you still need some level of medical expertise to be able to accurately interpret results on a lot of them but a smart enough layman could probably self diagnose some illnesses with enough homework.

We even need a prescription for repeat labs. So if my doctor is away for personal reasons for a month and I need to have my [thing that I get tested every month] checked, I can't without having to navigate the entire healthcare system to find a workaround.

I would be easy for me to interpret the results as my doctor is clear that [number] should not fall under [threshold]. It even comes back highlighted in red on the result sheet if it falls under that number. And I have clear instruction on what to do if that happens.

But nope.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com