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The Hollow Men of Hims

(www.alexkesin.com)
203 points quadrin | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.407s | source
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DoingSomeThings ◴[] No.44384247[source]
This is a frustrating article. To pick one example:

"The most damning aspect is not their exploitation of loopholes or their willingness to combine dangerous drug cocktails or even their reliance on unvetted Chinese suppliers..."

"unvetted" is doing a lot of work here. There's no evidence provided for this claim of working with shady sources and doing no diligence on the products they are selling. I know that to be false from first-hand connections in the telehealth space.

Hims works with 503B pharmacies. They are FDA inspected. They run batch testing on their source material and require strict compliance. All safe, legal, vetted pathways.

It's bizarre to me that the author is linking Novo Nordisk newswire press releases as sources of truth but is unwilling to to do basic research on how Hims operates. NN is hardly a faultless player here. They're selling this medicine for $1k+ per month!

Separately -- Algorithmic care is fine because most decisions are algorithmic. It's no different than what you receive from the 5-minute dr visit in person.

In a perfect world we'd have primary care doctors to coordinate care, direct you to the perfect pharmacy for each medicine you need, etc. In our real world, convenience and access are a good things. The shift from "patient" to DTC "client" is a net win for the public.

replies(1): >>44386861 #
1. matthewdgreen ◴[] No.44386861[source]
This is the one aspect of this article I’d have liked to understand better. It can simultaneously be the case that these compounding pharmacies are regulated, and also that they’re buying peptides from Chinese suppliers that aren’t regulated and hence there’s some room for serious problems. I’d be much happier if I felt that these suppliers were being carefully regulated and monitored but I’m not convinced that this is the case.