Remember, as Benjamin Franklin said, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," so that $35 might actually wind up being hundreds.

Then again Franklin died choking on his own vomit.


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[Edited 10/26/08 9:51am]

I find I avoid going to the doctor until it's absolutely positively necessary.

I've been sick all week with a sore throat since last Monday. My tonsils are huge with spots on them. My main reason for not going? I didn't want to pay a $35 copay for them to tell me it's just a virus, go home and drink lots of liquids and get plenty of rest.

But now that I'm on day 7 of humungous tonsils I've decided I probably DO need to go in as it's probably bacterial instead of viral and antibiotics are in order. But today's Sunday and that means urgent care which means my copay goes up to $55. So now I'm putting it off until tomorrow, hoping I can get in after work.

Do you avoid the doctor too? And why?

CarrieMpls said:

I avoid the doctor for the same reasons. It's too expensive. I have to pay $90 a pop. We are sick with the same thing Carrie. I'm pretty sure it's strep throat. So, definitely antibiotics are the fix.

My son has it too.

I have not gotten out of bed in two days. I'm miserable.

hokie said:

I was out of work Wednesday through Friday this week. (Though I have done some work from home through it all.)

I also have a cough and am all stuffed up, which is normally a sign it's NOT strep, or I'd have gone sooner. I got strep throat about twice each winter when I was a kid, so I'm quite familiar.

I avoid going to the doctor because I'm afraid of being yelled at/lectured. I know that's strange and most doctors don't yell at you but i went to one doctor who told me that I had the most horrible infection that she had ever seen and started yelling at me in english and spanish.

She diagnosed me with something rather serious without running any tests and told me that I "was not normal". So after I was done crying, I went to another doctor for a second opinion. He did not yell at me in any language, actually ran some tests, and told me that I was fine. So ever since then I've been a bit scared of going to the doctor.

JasmineFire said:

That's horrible!!!!

Remember, as Benjamin Franklin said, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," so that $35 might actually wind up being hundreds.

Then again Franklin died choking on his own vomit.


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[Edited 10/26/08 9:51am]

i have to go to the doctor every quater for a check up
the return the next week for lab work results
anytime i'm sick for more than 3 days i go.
once a year for a flu shot
and it seems i always seem to pick up something really major ontop of that every year.

out of 15 times a i year i end up going there are many times i don't want to go.
it's expensive when i was RyanWhite-Care Act and ADAP it was all free but than whn i got a job with Health Insurance it's 20 dollars a visit and my HAART is $60 a month and than ad on antibiotics oh the joy

ehuffnsd said:

going to the doctor is usually where one catches flu and colds

ehuffnsd said:

going to the doctor is usually where one catches flu and colds

If your doctor has prescribed antibiotics for the flu or told you to try B12 vitamins for fatigue, those treatments were probably just a placebo – an unproven therapy offered with the hope you'd feel better if you took something.

Treatment with placebos is far more common than you might think, according to a new national survey in which 46 percent to 58 percent of U.S. physicians admitted using placebos regularly. Only 5 percent said they tell patients explicitly that they are doing so.

“Frankly, I was astonished,” said Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, director of the National Institutes of Health department of bioethics and a co-author of the report published today by BMJ, formerly The British Medical Journal. The survey was sent to 1,200 internists and rheumatologists; 679 responded.

Placebos harness the mysterious power of the mind to heal the body; their benefits come from the positive expectations of the patient rather than any physical mechanism. The classic examples are sugar pills, saline injections and other treatments that seem to inspire confidence even though they are inert.

But the physicians surveyed were far more likely to use active agents as placebos, including over-the-counter painkillers, vitamins, sedatives and antibiotics.

What classifies them as placebos is the context. If the recommended treatment hasn't been shown, physiologically, to work for the condition in question, that's a placebo.

While apparently common, treating patients this way is controversial. Two years ago, the American Medical Association said it was wrong to use placebos without a person's knowledge. Some experts consider placebos unethical because they can involve a measure of deceit.

But other experts make a case for what they call “benevolent deception” – letting a patient believe he or she is getting a useful treatment because, paradoxically, it might work.

yup...and i saw in the San Diego Union Tribune the vast majority of doctors only prescribe pleacbos


http://www.signonsandiego...acebo.html

all of my doctors i've told them not to give me something if they don't know what is really gone.

ehuffnsd said:

"the vast majority only prescribe placebos"

Um, no. That is NOT what that study showed.

The study showed that a slim majority sometimes prescribe placebos. And often, doctors prescribe placebos because patients demand them. They want a quick fix in pill form, and get pissed off if the doctor tries to tell them that there is no easy cure for what ails them, or that the cure involves lifestyle changes. Or that the treatment that all of the people on this one website they use say works really well actually hasn't been shown to help. So the doctor prescribes a drug that may not help, but that probably won't hurt.

I think it's unethical to do that without explaining, "hey, this hasn't been proven to help your condition, but some people seem to feel better anyway. Might just be placebo, but do you want to try it?" But if people want to delude themselves, why should the dr stand in their way?