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Comment by timeon | Hacker News Reader

> if I wasn't asking ChatGPT, where would I go to get help?

Is this serious question? Can't you call/visit doctor?

I vibe coded an app and recorded all the things happening to my 50-something body. I shared that list with a few MDs -- they were useless. They literally can't handle anything except acute cases.

It's like telling someone to ask their doctor about nutrition. It's not in their scope any longer. They'll tell you to try things and figure it out.

The US medical industry abdicated their thing a long time ago. Doctors do something I'm sure, but discuss/advise/inquire isn't really one of them.

This was multiple doctors, in multiple locations, in various modalities, after blood tests and MRIs and CT scans. I live with literally zero of my issues resolved even a little tiny bit. And I paid a lot of money out of pocket (on top of insurance) for this experience.

Medical training is designed to produce operators who will add value to corporate health systems - prescribe pills, do procedures, or anything that can generate 'billable hours'. Actually educating patients to be healthy will only reduce corporate health system profits. Why do you think we have been fighting the 'war on cancer' since the 60s? Now 'personalized medicine' and synthetic peptide and complex immunotherapies are the latest twist with costs into 5 figures (orders of magnitude greater than standard therapies)and efficacy only better by a factor of 2 at best. Many treatments promise improved 'partial response rate' increases from 10 % to 50% yet a partial response is not a significant improvement.

AI is a disaster waiting to happen. As it is simply a regurgitation of what has been already said by real scientists, researchers,and physicians, it will be the 'entry drug' to advertise expensive therapies.

Thank goodness our corporations have not stooped to providing healthcare in exchange for blood donation, skin donation, or other organ donation. But I can imagine United HEalthcare merging with Blackstone so that people who need healthcare can get 'health care loans'.

> Why do you think we have been fighting the 'war on cancer' since the 60s?

Actually, we have made huge progress in the war on cancer, so this example doesn’t seem to support your narrative.

I babbled some symptoms I did not understand to a doctor who correctly diagnosed me with a very rare condition in 30 seconds. And that's after spending weeks prodding LLMs (~2 years ago) and getting nowhere.

I think the main point is to not “of course” either side of this. Use every tool and recourse available to you, but don’t bag on people for doing or not doing one or the other. “Ask your doctor” is presumptive for people who have and need more.

It can go both ways. The difference is that Dr. Chat's opinion takes 5 seconds and is free. It can be just as useless as a doctor who prescribes some med to mask your symptoms instead of understanding why you have them.

AI is a lot better now than it was 2 years ago. There wasn't even a reasoning model until the end of 2024!

Either way, nobody is arguing that doctors aren't great. Doctors are great!

The argument is that doctors are not accessible enough and getting additional advice from AI is beneficial.

Actual access to reliable healthcare is a massive assumption to make, not everyone has incredible health insurance or lives in a country with sufficient doctors/med staff. Most places are in crisis for lack of resources, I'd rather ask chatgpt or Gemini for something urgent rather than wait 5+ hours in ER for the doctor to say "just take some aspirin and go to a walk-in tomorrow"

Not to mention, going to an ER for something that doesn't turn out to be an emergency carries a high risk of coming back home with something significantly worse.

Last time I was in ER, I accompanied my wife; we got bounced due to lack of appropriate doctor on site, she ended up getting help in another hospital, and I came back home with severe case of COVID-19.

Related: every pediatrician I've been to with my kids during the flu season says the same thing: if you can't get an appointment in a local clinic, stay home; avoid hospitals unless the kid develops life-threatening symptoms, as visiting such places carry high risk of the kid catching something even worse (usually RSV).

There are only two places I still routinely wear a mask (n95) these days: Airplanes from waiting at the gate until about 10 minutes after takeoff when the air handling system has had time to clear things out (and the same after landing), and hospital/doctors visits. It's such a high ROI.

We used to observe that our kid(s) got sick every time we flew over the winter break to visit family. We no longer have this problem. (we do still have kids.) Not getting sick turns out to be really quite nice. :-) Hanging out in the pediatrician's office surrounded by snotty, coughing children who are not mine...

I'm Australian, but from what I understand from my friends in America, no.

They only go when it's urgent/very worrying.

If you don't need to be physically seen to make a determination, most hospitals and networks operate phone lines where you can speak with a nurse who will triage symptoms and either recommend home remedies or an appointment as needed.

I'm not sure if this has switched entirely to video calls or not, but when it became popular it was a great way to avoid overloading urgent care and general physicians with non-urgent help requests.

As someone who was recently injured and waited three months to see a specialist in Seattle, these lines were not helpful ("yes, you should make an appointment"). The only way I was able to see someone was to write a script that blew up my phone when I got a cancellation window email (the first two I missed even though I responded within 30 seconds).

Yeah, those lines are for triage, not specialty care. It's nice when you've got an infant and are a new parent and everything is terrifying, or a fever and want to know if it is bad enough to warrant going in somewhere.

Exactly, they're not an alternative to a doctor, which is the point... it's nearly impossible to see a provider these days if you don't have a pre-existing relationship. I moved recently and finding a PCP who is accepting new patients is also maddening.

I'm not fond of the fact that it's owned by Amazon but I use OneMedical and I can get a call to a doctor ~immediately, or to my regular doctor within a day or so.

I took an at home flu test, messaged my doctor at no cost telling him I’d tested positive (he didn’t even ask for a picture) and paid $25 from a tax free the same day. My doctor is part of a large hospital system too, he didn’t want me to come in just sent the rx.

People with public health care may have a hard time understanding the costs of medical advice and pharma here in the US. We're in deep doo-doo.

I'm also Australian and some of these comments have really made me re-appreciate what we have in Medicare. Damn, it's got its issues, but the American attitudes towards their healthcare system are downright bleak. Deeply worrying that the prevailing attitude seems to be "But ChatGPT is so good" rather than "Our healthcare system is so bad." Remind me to visit my GP next week to thank them.

I have no job and no health insurance. After crafting my prompt correctly (I have W symptoms, X blood markers, have Y lifestyle, and Z demography) ChatGPT accurately diagnosed my problem. (You have REDS and need to eat more food, dumbass.)

Or, I could've gone to a doctor and overloaded our healthcare system even more.

ChatGPT serves as a good sanity check.

It depends on where you live and what the issue is.

Where I live, doctors are only good for life threatening stuff - the things you probably wouldn't be asking ChatGPT anyway. But for general health, you either:

1. Have to book in advance, wait, and during the visit doctor just says that it's not a big deal, because they really don't have time or capacity for this.

2. You go private, doctor goes on a wild hunt with you, you spend a ton of time and money, and then 3 months later you get the answer ChatGPT could have told you in a few minuites for $20/mo (and probably with better backed, more recent research).

If anything, the only time ChatGPT answers wrong on health related matters is when it tries to be careful and omits details because "be advised, I'm not a doctor, I can't give you this information" bullshit.

A lot of doctors also give bad and incorrect advice. I actually find that to be the norm

Until very recently, it took a week to get an appointment with my primary care doctor, and calls weren't an option. Now that video calls are an option, I get get one in a day or two. I could always go to urgent care to get an answer faster, but that costs more.

With what money?

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