[fidotron]

Exactly. You could even have the option of contributing your MRI scans to academic research so that future identification of cancer improves, and set up a happy feedback loop.

The scary truth is modern western medicine is primarily optimized to extract revenue while reducing spending and improving patient outcomes is merely a side effect of that process. Even in places such as the UK NHS it's all about not finding out things we don't want to know so we don't have to spend money dealing with it.

This is why I look forward to when we can replace doctors (not nurses) with AI.

[magicalist]

> The scary truth is modern western medicine is primarily optimized to extract revenue

MRI scans are a fantastic source of revenue, as are treatments for things that don't actually need to get treated. Reducing those things are actually doing the opposite of the motivation you're claiming.

[fidotron]

Those raise revenue. Actual spending involves effort which cannot be easily industrialized, and is only done to maintain the prestige of the industry.

This is why getting tested for something which results in endless prescriptions is done enthusiastically while a test for something which might find something which requires them doing actual work provokes the sort of self serving concerns expressed elsewhere.

[magicalist]

> This is why getting tested for something which results in endless prescriptions is done enthusiastically while a test for something which might find something which requires them doing actual work provokes the sort of self serving concerns expressed elsewhere.

You'll have to be more specific because right now this is just handwaving. What kind of "actual work" are you referring to?

It's generally actual medical researchers, who will neither get revenue or have to do actual work, who are objecting to excessive testing without patient outcome benefits.

[fidotron]

> You'll have to be more specific because right now this is just handwaving. What kind of "actual work" are you referring to?

Anything that isn't completely reduced to an industrial process. i.e. we want to have a simple no-effort repeatable billable outcome for this or we won't do it and will claim doing so is counter productive or dangerous.

> It's generally actual medical researchers, who will neither get revenue or have to do actual work, who are objecting to excessive testing without patient outcome benefits.

And they're doing the establishment's dirty work by doing so.

To provide a concrete example, I'm in Canada, and my other half had to pay for private MRI and ultrasound scans to identify a lump that she was laughed out of the room by three successive doctors for claiming she had. The MRI got her finally referred to a surgeon that announced he'd never seen anything like it, removes it, end of story.

That's far from an isolated case. I know people in the UK that literally died from these antics.

At one point I was invited to the opening of some medical simulation centre, and the speeches were enlightening. Two things stay with me: tests in India demonstrated that qualified doctors were no better than unqualified doctors except when the qualified doctors were told some of the patients were faking as part of an experiment and they are being observed, but mainly "I read a study that showed ~5-10% of people in US hospital are there because of a medical mistake from a previous visit, so I laughed and commissioned an equivalent study to show how much better we are in Canada, except for us it was >15%". The person telling that story was rightly disgusted. Those are not numbers for a profession that respects patients in the slightest.

You will forgive people with actual experience on the receiving end of this nonsense for thinking that maybe it's not actually setup to provide the assistance it claims to provide, and is primarily for the aggrandizement of those engaged in the rituals.