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The Hollow Men of Hims

(www.alexkesin.com)
208 points quadrin | 1 comments | 25 Jun 25 22:59 UTC | HN request time: 0.219s | source
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jackdeansmith ◴[26 Jun 25 00:00 UTC] No.44382963[source]▶
>The real tragedy is not that Hims exists, but that it works so perfectly. Every day, thousands of people choose their compounded weight-loss drugs over FDA-approved alternatives, their combination ED pills over established single-ingredient treatments, their algorithmic consultations over actual medical care. They make these choices not because the products are better, but because the entire experience has been optimized to feel more like shopping and less like confronting the mortality and vulnerability that define the human condition.

Strongly disagree with almost everything in this article, but specifically this. The reason people make these choices is not because of slick marketing working against them, it's because the existing process to get medical treatment is paternalistic, hard to navigate and often expensive.

If you want safe and really high quality medical care you should absolutely have a personal physician you have a personal relationship with, who understands your lifestyle, your risk factors for side effects, and your medical needs deeply. How many Americans have that? Maybe a few dozen? The market has responded to just how terrible the existing system is.

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1. ike2792 ◴[26 Jun 25 15:02 UTC] No.44388125[source]▶
+1000 to this. If your primary care physician works for a large medical chain (which most do), they aren't allowed to prescribe anything that goes against the chain's so-called "evidence-based" standards. Never mind that most medical chains also have insurance company arms and that these "standards" just happen to line up with whatever it is the insurance company thinks is appropriate to pay for. If you go to an independent clinic you can usually get prescriptions for "lifestyle" issues such as the ones Hims treats and then use GoodRx or a cheap online pharmacy to fulfill your prescriptions. Unfortunately, one of the side effects of the 2010 Affordable Care Act was to incentivize consolidation in the health care space, so independent clinics and practitioners are a dying breed.