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drethelin comments on Link: "Health Care Myth Busters: Is There a High Degree of Scientific Certainty in Modern Medicine?" - Less Wrong Discussion

8 Post author: CronoDAS 01 April 2011 05:25AM

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Comment author: drethelin 01 April 2011 04:37:29PM 0 points [-]

Is there an established procedure for fixing an entire profession? What's the solution if almost all doctors are wrong about a great many things? I suppose changing Med School to produce new more competent doctors could work, except then every new doctor has to work with old doctors as soon as they graduate that do things in a different and worse way.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 01 April 2011 04:43:40PM 5 points [-]

This article, about the process and results of incorporating standard checklists into medical procedures, seems like a reasonable example of a success story and makes me wonder how many improvements could be implemented, not so much by making more competent doctors, but by pushing the cultural idea that doctors, like programmers, are technical specialists who operate best as part of a team that includes competent project managers.

Comment author: DanielLC 02 April 2011 04:00:01AM 1 point [-]

Start a business that does it right. If you can get past the regulators and such, and there are enough rational customers, you'd do better than everyone else, and they'd start copying you.

Comment author: Vladimir_M 02 April 2011 05:14:38AM *  3 points [-]

Start a business that does it right. If you can get past the regulators and such, and there are enough rational customers, you'd do better than everyone else, and they'd start copying you.

Well, good luck getting past regulators in a profession that operates as a self-regulating guild!

In my opinion, the only mechanism of competition that could conceivably ameliorate the systematic problems of medicine is the international medical tourism. However, I'm far from certain that free competition has much potential for preventing medicine from drifting away from reality, considering how much people are prone to biased and even outright magical thinking on this subject, even when all the incentives to get things right are in place.

Comment author: DanielLC 03 April 2011 05:56:14PM 0 points [-]

I think business have to be more rational than people in general. If you pay for your own health care, this would be a problem, but if you have health insurance, they'll just pay for what works.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 03 April 2011 11:07:09PM 2 points [-]

If you pay for your own health care, this would be a problem, but if you have health insurance, they'll just pay for what works.

This is more-or-less the reason health insurance companies are so hated.

Comment author: nazgulnarsil 01 April 2011 11:32:21PM 0 points [-]

start over in a new country. over time health outcomes will drive immigration.