Seniors spend the equivalent of 3 weeks a year on health care, study says(washingtonpost.com)
washingtonpost.com
Seniors spend the equivalent of 3 weeks a year on health care, study says
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2024/01/29/time-spent-doctors-health-seniors/
45 comments
The funny thing here is, I'm in the US, I pay a massive amount for health insurance, and have nearly identical experiences.
> I have no GP (none accept new patients)
Sounds like you are living in Germany. I would consider it public health insurance but is a long way from universal healthcare. Although you may not be paying directly for a treatment, the whole medicine sector is private (I.e. there are no doctors directly working for the insurance provider). That causes some inefficiencies like hours of waiting in ER, doctors not accepting new patients etc.
Compared to other systems in the EU (where doctors work for the insurance provider, most often times the government itself) processes are way more streamlined, like getting a GP assigned depending on where you live. But “you get the healthcare that you need, not the one you want”. Other issue is that they are almost running at capacity, so things like a pandemic tip the system over quite easily…
Sounds like you are living in Germany. I would consider it public health insurance but is a long way from universal healthcare. Although you may not be paying directly for a treatment, the whole medicine sector is private (I.e. there are no doctors directly working for the insurance provider). That causes some inefficiencies like hours of waiting in ER, doctors not accepting new patients etc.
Compared to other systems in the EU (where doctors work for the insurance provider, most often times the government itself) processes are way more streamlined, like getting a GP assigned depending on where you live. But “you get the healthcare that you need, not the one you want”. Other issue is that they are almost running at capacity, so things like a pandemic tip the system over quite easily…
Let me guess, France?
As far as the healthcare system is concerned, patients' time has zero cost. And the system is already stretched as it is trying to deliver care to an aging population with a growing chronic disease burden. The only exception is concierge medicine but that obviously isn't a scalable solution.
On an personal basis the best approach is to delay the onset of chronic disease as long as possible and minimize your dependence on healthcare. While there is some luck involved, most people can achieve significant improvements.
https://peterattiamd.com/outlive/
On an personal basis the best approach is to delay the onset of chronic disease as long as possible and minimize your dependence on healthcare. While there is some luck involved, most people can achieve significant improvements.
https://peterattiamd.com/outlive/
Yeah I’m starting to realize this too. You can even order relatively cheap medical tests yourself and learn how to interpret them, and go to a real doctor if things look amiss. (This is not medical advice, I’m not a doctor, etc)
When I become old enough to need more regular medical care, hopefully I won’t be priced out of concierge or and it hasn’t enshittified to where non-concierge is now.
When I become old enough to need more regular medical care, hopefully I won’t be priced out of concierge or and it hasn’t enshittified to where non-concierge is now.
This article and title are extremely misleading. It’s not 3 weeks of 24-hour days. It’s 21 ‘contact days’, i.e. days in which contact was made with the healthcare system. By this definition a pregnant woman probably spends 2 ‘weeks’ on health care just in prenatal visits.
That doesn’t seem like a bad number.
Yeah, a lot of people spend 3 weeks a year commuting.
Yeah wait till you learn how much goes to taxes.
With exercise, meal planning, therapy, meditation etc on top of doctors visits, I'm probably spending 3 months a year. Most of it is preventative health care though.
No matter how skilled a physician you consult, most of the damage to one’s health (or improvements) happens on the other 364 days you don’t see them. This include individual factors like diet and exercise, taking needed meds regularly. Also “social determinants” like sanitation, ability to afford said meds, working and living conditions.
I’m really scared of getting old. I’m hoping someone “cures” aging in my lifetime.
The one thing my mom noticed and I've noticed is people are healthier in middle and old age than they used to be. Mom said when she was a kid (circa 1950) people in their 50's and 60's were usually just shot. I have friends pushing into their 70's who are very good shape. So I think the years of decline and exit are getting compressed. People are living healthy longer.
You can of course be unlucky and you can obviously wreck your health. Hint, damage you do to your health after 40 doesn't go away.
You can of course be unlucky and you can obviously wreck your health. Hint, damage you do to your health after 40 doesn't go away.
Is it possible she’s biased by upwards class movement?
The blue collar folks in my family are still shot in their 60s. My parents had cushy office jobs but are doing their darndest to die in their 70s (extremely sedentary and medically obese)
No one will cure aging in your lifetime. If we were actually making progress towards this goal then we would see incremental improvements in maximum lifespan but so far no one has exceed the record of 122 years set in 1997. You will die in a few decades just like everyone else.
Increasing healthspan is for all intents and purposes highly similar, barring actually raising the hard limit.
> I’m hoping someone “cures” aging in my lifetime.
They made a whole movie about it! https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070723/
They made a whole movie about it! https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070723/
And here I was thinking that was going to be Logan's Run or Cocoon.
Or Tuck Everlasting maybe
"Fear begins when you realize you can die. Fear ends when you accept that you will die."
Something else I ponder, which helps, is that since life is not well-defined, then neither is death. We perceive a difference, but it is fuzzy. We're constantly dying, but also can never really die; as walking, talking sacks of chemicals there is a sense in which we were never really alive in the first place.
We sink back into the chaos that birthed us, not as finite isolated beings, but as waves that rise above the ocean for a moment before returning their water for the next wave.
Something else I ponder, which helps, is that since life is not well-defined, then neither is death. We perceive a difference, but it is fuzzy. We're constantly dying, but also can never really die; as walking, talking sacks of chemicals there is a sense in which we were never really alive in the first place.
We sink back into the chaos that birthed us, not as finite isolated beings, but as waves that rise above the ocean for a moment before returning their water for the next wave.
I don’t think their fear is a fear of death, it’s a fear of aging, of getting old. The physical frailty, mental lapses, mobility issues, etc.
Hmm, I see. I think those problems of fraily often accrue from causes other than age, so it's not how I would have framed it, but it's possible you're right. Thanks for the extra perspective compared to my assumptions.
Aging is optional.
"Why tiptoe through life, to arrive safely at death?"
--Christopher Brian Bridges
"Why tiptoe through life, to arrive safely at death?"
--Christopher Brian Bridges
Getting old rocks, I highly recommend it.
why? everyone who has ever existed long enough gets old. even if they "cured" aging, it is likely you'd still get old. also, if someone found the fountain of youth, what makes you think they'd allow you to drink from it?
we should have Brian Johnson reporting back to us shortly
Ya, but, like, you know, give it 5-10 years. Society needs to do a generational refresh
I’m scared of getting old in a late stage capitalist society.
I have similar fears in a late stage communist society.
Thankfully in the US we’re not stuck reverting to socialism, there are other options to improve what we have to serve the people. It’s not “capitalism as practiced in the US” or “socialism as practiced in the USSR.” More options exist, the struggle is getting the momentum for change.
Capitalism and serve the people are opposed to one another.
No thanks, don't want a late stage "other plan" either.
"Early stage" anything doesn't sound very good either
I took a lot of seniors to and from their health care appointments when I was taxi driving. After a while I started to try to get them to chuckle about their predicament of being tossed from specialist to specialist. The system I observed made no effort to put people's health problems into context.
Last year I went on a few doctors visits with two seniors. The one lady to her visit with the substitute PA. All she got was a referral to an endocrinologist, which went nowhere, as there is no endocrinologist in our rural community. The next visit was to the practice's new MD. After a few minutes of watching the doctor's efforts to pull something meaningful out of the woman's EHR, I informed the doctor that the woman had gotten 'sad' after her partner died about a year before (stopped eating well, etc). The whole visit changed - the MD was able to acknowledge the person in front of him. Then he went back to thinking about a drug to treat the woman's complaint about anxiety, when it was perfectly obvious to me that exhaustion was her actual problem. At least he didn't put her on benzodiazepines.
The other senior's appointment was a surgery consult. The doctor considered the X-rays, said "this is exactly why you're hurting" and "surgery is the only way you'll have any quality of life". Perfectly reasonable, from his limited perspective. At the end the surgeon asked the patient if he had any other health problems. "No." I knew better, but didn't say anything.
Prasad's law [0] describes the how our health care system is incentivized to provide expensive medicine instead of interventions patients actually need.
I've been thinking about 'the predicaments of old people' for 10 years, since one of passenger delivered a lesson to me about his neighbors. The essence of seniors' predicaments is that they can't be honest with their doctors because they'll be shamed, and their doctors wouldn't know how to help them anyways.
[0] "Which Interventions Can Be Paid For: The Explanatory Power of “Prasad’s Law”" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21728864
Last year I went on a few doctors visits with two seniors. The one lady to her visit with the substitute PA. All she got was a referral to an endocrinologist, which went nowhere, as there is no endocrinologist in our rural community. The next visit was to the practice's new MD. After a few minutes of watching the doctor's efforts to pull something meaningful out of the woman's EHR, I informed the doctor that the woman had gotten 'sad' after her partner died about a year before (stopped eating well, etc). The whole visit changed - the MD was able to acknowledge the person in front of him. Then he went back to thinking about a drug to treat the woman's complaint about anxiety, when it was perfectly obvious to me that exhaustion was her actual problem. At least he didn't put her on benzodiazepines.
The other senior's appointment was a surgery consult. The doctor considered the X-rays, said "this is exactly why you're hurting" and "surgery is the only way you'll have any quality of life". Perfectly reasonable, from his limited perspective. At the end the surgeon asked the patient if he had any other health problems. "No." I knew better, but didn't say anything.
Prasad's law [0] describes the how our health care system is incentivized to provide expensive medicine instead of interventions patients actually need.
I've been thinking about 'the predicaments of old people' for 10 years, since one of passenger delivered a lesson to me about his neighbors. The essence of seniors' predicaments is that they can't be honest with their doctors because they'll be shamed, and their doctors wouldn't know how to help them anyways.
[0] "Which Interventions Can Be Paid For: The Explanatory Power of “Prasad’s Law”" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21728864
Then why do their complaints make it seem they are busy with it all the time?
Time spent with healthcare professionals does not account for time spent being impaired and adapting to those impairments. That's 3 weeks a year doing health care AND your entire year spent using a walker to get around your house.
There's also a distribution here, there's a fair amount of seniors with fairly minimal health problems at any given time, and some who are in more dire straits. You hear more from the people in dire straits.
There's also a distribution here, there's a fair amount of seniors with fairly minimal health problems at any given time, and some who are in more dire straits. You hear more from the people in dire straits.
So last month, I spent probably 1-2 hours on a medication issue. But if you were talking to me last month, you would have the impression that I was working on it for a full week. I needed to coordinate with the pharmacist, and then the doctor, and then another 3 pharmacies because < ... long and redacted rant about the DEA, pharmaceutical law, the cowards at the FDA, the cowards at modern big pharmacy corporations, and the lack of actual initiative and care provided by pharmacies ... >, then the doctor again, then the pharmacy again and then finally after all of that, I had to actually go and pick up my medication.
Each one of those steps might have only been 5-10 minutes out of my day at the time, but each of those steps played out over the course of a week. Additionally, each one of those steps doesn't account for having to block out that time of my day during a time when I would be most likely to reach the people I needed to without sitting on hold for an hour. It doesn't reflect the time I spent worrying about actually being able to get the medication I needed at all. It doesn't reflect the time I spent angry and frustrated at everyone involved in the process. And it doesn't reflect just how much of an energy suck the entire thing was in the first place. Nor the depression that comes from knowing I'm about to do it all over again next week. Or the fact that the month after that, I'll probably be doing it again and dealing with the insurance company on top of it. All of it looms over me like a storm cloud you can see coming for miles.
I also spent another ~30 hours on an unrelated medical thing, but that's only the time I spent actually doing it. Not the hour+ travel time every day, the extra hours put in at the office to make up for the lost time, the changes to routines and rescheduling of other items around it and so on and so forth.
Your health is the baseline from which everything else in your life is derived. Take care of it, because when it's gone, it takes so much more from you than just the time you spend at the doctor's office.
Each one of those steps might have only been 5-10 minutes out of my day at the time, but each of those steps played out over the course of a week. Additionally, each one of those steps doesn't account for having to block out that time of my day during a time when I would be most likely to reach the people I needed to without sitting on hold for an hour. It doesn't reflect the time I spent worrying about actually being able to get the medication I needed at all. It doesn't reflect the time I spent angry and frustrated at everyone involved in the process. And it doesn't reflect just how much of an energy suck the entire thing was in the first place. Nor the depression that comes from knowing I'm about to do it all over again next week. Or the fact that the month after that, I'll probably be doing it again and dealing with the insurance company on top of it. All of it looms over me like a storm cloud you can see coming for miles.
I also spent another ~30 hours on an unrelated medical thing, but that's only the time I spent actually doing it. Not the hour+ travel time every day, the extra hours put in at the office to make up for the lost time, the changes to routines and rescheduling of other items around it and so on and so forth.
Your health is the baseline from which everything else in your life is derived. Take care of it, because when it's gone, it takes so much more from you than just the time you spend at the doctor's office.
Because on a low level they are. 3 weeks = ~504 hours, averaged across a year that's ~1 hour and change, every day, dealing with health issues.
I’m not sure why you are being downvoted.
Maybe something like 40% of all value in America is in “feeling seen and heard.” Everything helps outcomes, but feelings aren’t the highest on the list of things that help outcomes, and it’s one of the most expensive to provide, and it’s behind the proliferation of sub clinical admin and midlevel staff, but it’s also what people want.
Maybe something like 40% of all value in America is in “feeling seen and heard.” Everything helps outcomes, but feelings aren’t the highest on the list of things that help outcomes, and it’s one of the most expensive to provide, and it’s behind the proliferation of sub clinical admin and midlevel staff, but it’s also what people want.
Because you haven’t considered the issue with sufficient knowledge of it to understand.
I have no GP (non accepts new patients), getting any sort of prescription or referral for a specialists is a big hustle.
It took me 5 years to find a dentist that accepted new patients. Now she is on maternity leave for a year, so I will have to do root cannal in Turkey (like 3td main reason for this trip).
I had to visit ER with a relative, we spend 12 hours waiting for treatment!