7 ms·

I have no doubt that a lot of garden-variety diagnoses and treatments can be done by an AI system that is fine-tuned and vetted to accomplish the task. I recent

I have no doubt that a lot of garden-variety diagnoses and treatments can be done by an AI system that is fine-tuned and vetted to accomplish the task. I recently had to pay $93 to have a virtual session with a physician to get prescription for a cough syrup, which I already knew what to take before talking to her because I did some research/reading. Some may argue, "Doctors studied years in med school and you shouldn't trust Google more than them", but knowing human's fallibility and knowing that a lot of doctors do look things up on places like https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/solutions/uptodate https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/solutions/uptodate to refresh/reaffirm their knowledge, I'd argue that if we are willing to take the risk, why shouldn't we be allowed to take that risk on our own? Why do I have to pay $93 (on top of the cough syrup that costed ~$44) just so that the doctor can see me on Zoom for less than 5 mins and submit an order for the med? With the healthcare prices increasing at the breakneck speed, I am sure AI will take more and more role in diagnosing and treating people's common illnesses, and hopefully (doubt it), the some of that savings will be transferred to the patients. P.S. In contrast to the US system, in my home city (Rangoon, Burma/Myanmar), I have multiple clinics near my home and a couple of pharmacy within two bus stops distance. I can either go buy most of the medications I need from the pharmacy (without prescription) and take them on my own (why am I not allowed to take that risk?) OR I can go see a doctor at one of these clinics to confirm my diagnosis, pay him/her $10-$20 for the visit, and then head down to the pharmacy to buy the medication. Of course, some of the medications that include opioids will only be sold to me with the doctor's prescription, but a good number of other meds are available as long as I can afford them.

yapyap 1y ago
You think you won’t have to pay the AI? lol.
- hollerith 1y ago
  IMHO it is much easier to increase the supply of AI doctor hours than the supply of human doctor hours, and supply constraints are the main thing maintaining doctor hours at the high price it currently sells for.
- resource_waste 1y ago
  My $700 laptop can run an 8B model in 2023.
BeetleB 1y ago
Where are you that you need a prescription to get cough medicine? The only ones I know of that require prescription are the ones with controlled substances.
- dgfitz 1y ago
  > Of course, some of the medications that include opioids will only be sold to me with the doctor's prescription
  - BeetleB 1y ago
    Yes, and the commenter was not complaining about such cases!
- HaZeust 1y ago
  Ain't nothing wrong with a little Wockhardt to get you through the day
- nerdsniper 1y ago
  Benzonatate is a commonly prescribed somewhat stronger cough medicine which requires a prescription. I've known a number of people who've had to take it for a persistent or stubborn cough. Wikipedia says "Overdose of only a small number of capsules can be fatal" but the study they quote shows that you'd need to take 10x-20x the usual dose for the smallest amount that's been shown to kill anyone -- which is admittedly more narrow of a safety window than over-the-counter Tylenol/Acetaminophen/Paracetamol but still, few people take 10-20 pills in one day of something that says "take 1 per day".
ezst 1y ago
I mean, if such is your typical experience with healthcare, what you need is a big shake up, don't count on AI to help you there! (but it might inflate the profit margins for the few running the show at your expense).
onlyrealcuzzo 1y ago
There are simply not enough doctors for doctors to be doing this work. We have a massive, massive shortage of doctors. The industry is doing everything they can to make it worse by the day, so I won't hold my breath that we'll get the slightest bit of respite. It'd obviously be ideal if everyone could see a doctor for an affordable price any time they wanted. We don't live in the ideal world. This would be a HUGE win for most people.
- nradov 1y ago
  This is why most routine primary care can be delivered by Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants working under a doctor's supervision.
  - closewith 1y ago
    NPs and community paramedics are definitely the future for a huge chunk of the current GP workload, but PAs are a failed experiment which are being rolled back pretty much everywhere.
    - nradov 1y ago
      Are you sure about that? The ranks of PAs have been expanding rapidly. I know there has been some political resistance over expanding their scope of practice but I'm not aware of it being significantly rolled back. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/physician-assistants.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/physician-assistants.htm
      - closewith 1y ago
        The US is the global outlier here and it's in the face of the evidence. The number of PAs globally is plummeting as they're abolished by national authorities.
        nradov 1y ago
        Nah. Total PA numbers are increasing in many other developed countries as well, including Canada and much of Europe. We can have a discussion about whether this is a good idea, but first you need to stop lying and making things up. https://capa-acam.ca/pa-profession/pa-facts https://capa-acam.ca/pa-profession/pa-facts https://www.srh-university.de/de/folder/news/2025/04-25/erstes-fachbuch-ueber-physician-assistants-in-deutschland-erschienen/ https://www.srh-university.de/de/folder/news/2025/04-25/erst... https://www.bigregister.nl/over-het-big-register/cijfers/verloop-over-5-jaar https://www.bigregister.nl/over-het-big-register/cijfers/ver...
imiric 1y ago
> Why do I have to pay $93 (on top of the cough syrup that costed ~$44) just so that the doctor can see me on Zoom for less than 5 mins and submit an order for the med? Because you're paying for the expertise of someone who studied for more than a decade which you won't get from a random web search. An AI system with today's technology should be less trustworthy for medical diagnosis than a web search. At least with a web search you might stumble upon a site with content from experts, assuming you trust yourself to be able to discern expert advice from bot-generated and spam content. Even if a doctor is doing the searching instead of me, I would pay them only for their knowledge to make that discernment for me. Why you think an AI could do better than a human at that is beyond me. Your question reminds me of that famous Henry Ford GE invoice story: > Making chalk mark on generator: $1. > Knowing where to make mark: $9,999.
- 85392_school 1y ago
  AI systems have been improving. O3 now has the capability to decide to search multiple times as part of its response.
  - creata 1y ago
    Even o4-mini (free) uses web searches and runs Python scripts very eagerly. I'm not sure how long they'll be able to afford giving all of that away.
- ChadNauseam 1y ago
  You answered why someone would want to pay $93, but not why they have to pay $93.
- hiatus 1y ago
  There's a limit though right? How about, if you can accurately predict the doctor's diagnosis it's free? If not you pay. This person needed a doctor's approval presumably for a prescription they couldn't get without authorization which leads to this gatekeeping. Not to mention also contributes to the insane medical costs in the US. $93 for 5 minutes is over 1k _an hour_ for what amounts to a rubber stamp (because how much can you really dig into a person's medical history and condition in 5 mins).
const_cast 1y ago
The only reason this worked is because your situation was exceedingly simple. The trouble is you are not educated enough to tell what is simple and what isn't. A cough could be a cough or it could be something more serious, only a "real" examination will reveal that. And sometimes even that's not enough, you need an examination by a specialists. I'll tell you a story. Once upon a time I got pain in my balls. I went to a doctor and he felt around and he said he didn't feel anything. I went to another doctor and he felt something, but he had no idea what it was. He said could be a cyst, could be a swollen vein, could be an infection - he didn't even know if it was on the testicle or on the tube thingy. Then I went to a Urologist. You can tell this man has felt up a lot of balls. He felt me up and said, "yup, that's a tumor" almost immediately. He was right, of course, and he ended up being the one to remove it too. Since I caught the cancer pretty early the chemotherapy wasn't too intense. Point is, expertise matters when things aren't straight forward. Then, experience and perspective gets to shine.
- senordevnyc 1y ago
  I don't think this is the slam-dunk you think it is. You had to go to three doctors before someone recognized something was wrong. ChatGPT is the substitute for the first two doctors, not the third. And even there, I bet ChatGPT would have told you to go see a doctor, since it can't feel your balls. And after your first appointment, if you had told it that you still thought something was wrong, it would probably have told you to go see a urologist.
  - threecheese 1y ago
    I fall slightly on the “doomer” side of the safety spectrum, but if I’m being honest I’ll be first in line - rain, sleet, or snow - to buy the chatgpt that can!
  - slg 1y ago
    >And even there, I bet ChatGPT would have told you to go see a doctor So what is the value add of ChatGPT in this scenario? Either it says you don't need to see the doctor which could very well kill you or it tells you to visit the doctor and it doesn't actually help you in any way.
djtango 1y ago
Yes and being able to buy and take whatever you want has led to rampant antibiotics abuse. Unfortunately medicine at the high level always has to cater to the lowest common denominator. Personally, while I agree AI can probably take up some of the mundane triage I have some reservations about AI in its current LLM form being a good judge as patients are unreliable narrators and doctors rely on many senses and heuristics to make their recommendations. An AI fine tuned to be a doctor with perfect health data and patient history is an interesting prospect, especially given the loss of the "family doctor" but that kind of data collection is a way away and has other Pandora's box considerations
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
  - AStonesThrow 1y ago
    Um, I hate to burst your bubble, but antibiotics are not prescribed at all for viral infections, because viruses are not vulnerable to antibiotics. Therefore you are definitely right about the current and traditional "best cure" for the flu! Antibiotics must only be prescribed against bacterial type infections, and that is indeed one of the reasons a physician's consult is required, so that the physician can discern whether it's viral or bacterial, and choose an appropriate course of action. Malpractice indeed for making such a rookie mistake. Pneumonia, being frequently caused by bacteria, is definitely something they'll prescribe antibiotics for, so a positive diagnosis would be a key first step there. So it is quite telling, isn't it, that many people believe that taking antibiotics can cure viral infections, because if they were OTC they could really get abused in that respect, couldn't they!

yapyap 1y ago

You think you won’t have to pay the AI? lol.

hollerith 1y ago
IMHO it is much easier to increase the supply of AI doctor hours than the supply of human doctor hours, and supply constraints are the main thing maintaining doctor hours at the high price it currently sells for.
resource_waste 1y ago
My $700 laptop can run an 8B model in 2023.

BeetleB 1y ago

Where are you that you need a prescription to get cough medicine? The only ones I know of that require prescription are the ones with controlled substances.

dgfitz 1y ago
> Of course, some of the medications that include opioids will only be sold to me with the doctor's prescription
- BeetleB 1y ago
  Yes, and the commenter was not complaining about such cases!
HaZeust 1y ago
Ain't nothing wrong with a little Wockhardt to get you through the day
nerdsniper 1y ago
Benzonatate is a commonly prescribed somewhat stronger cough medicine which requires a prescription. I've known a number of people who've had to take it for a persistent or stubborn cough. Wikipedia says "Overdose of only a small number of capsules can be fatal" but the study they quote shows that you'd need to take 10x-20x the usual dose for the smallest amount that's been shown to kill anyone -- which is admittedly more narrow of a safety window than over-the-counter Tylenol/Acetaminophen/Paracetamol but still, few people take 10-20 pills in one day of something that says "take 1 per day".

ezst 1y ago

I mean, if such is your typical experience with healthcare, what you need is a big shake up, don't count on AI to help you there! (but it might inflate the profit margins for the few running the show at your expense).

onlyrealcuzzo 1y ago

There are simply not enough doctors for doctors to be doing this work. We have a massive, massive shortage of doctors. The industry is doing everything they can to make it worse by the day, so I won't hold my breath that we'll get the slightest bit of respite. It'd obviously be ideal if everyone could see a doctor for an affordable price any time they wanted. We don't live in the ideal world. This would be a HUGE win for most people.

nradov 1y ago
This is why most routine primary care can be delivered by Nurse Practitioners and Physician Assistants working under a doctor's supervision.
- closewith 1y ago
  NPs and community paramedics are definitely the future for a huge chunk of the current GP workload, but PAs are a failed experiment which are being rolled back pretty much everywhere.
  - nradov 1y ago
    Are you sure about that? The ranks of PAs have been expanding rapidly. I know there has been some political resistance over expanding their scope of practice but I'm not aware of it being significantly rolled back. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/physician-assistants.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/physician-assistants.htm
    - closewith 1y ago
      The US is the global outlier here and it's in the face of the evidence. The number of PAs globally is plummeting as they're abolished by national authorities.
      - nradov 1y ago
        Nah. Total PA numbers are increasing in many other developed countries as well, including Canada and much of Europe. We can have a discussion about whether this is a good idea, but first you need to stop lying and making things up. https://capa-acam.ca/pa-profession/pa-facts https://capa-acam.ca/pa-profession/pa-facts https://www.srh-university.de/de/folder/news/2025/04-25/erstes-fachbuch-ueber-physician-assistants-in-deutschland-erschienen/ https://www.srh-university.de/de/folder/news/2025/04-25/erst... https://www.bigregister.nl/over-het-big-register/cijfers/verloop-over-5-jaar https://www.bigregister.nl/over-het-big-register/cijfers/ver...

imiric 1y ago

> Why do I have to pay $93 (on top of the cough syrup that costed ~$44) just so that the doctor can see me on Zoom for less than 5 mins and submit an order for the med? Because you're paying for the expertise of someone who studied for more than a decade which you won't get from a random web search. An AI system with today's technology should be less trustworthy for medical diagnosis than a web search. At least with a web search you might stumble upon a site with content from experts, assuming you trust yourself to be able to discern expert advice from bot-generated and spam content. Even if a doctor is doing the searching instead of me, I would pay them only for their knowledge to make that discernment for me. Why you think an AI could do better than a human at that is beyond me. Your question reminds me of that famous Henry Ford GE invoice story: > Making chalk mark on generator: $1. > Knowing where to make mark: $9,999.

85392_school 1y ago
AI systems have been improving. O3 now has the capability to decide to search multiple times as part of its response.
- creata 1y ago
  Even o4-mini (free) uses web searches and runs Python scripts very eagerly. I'm not sure how long they'll be able to afford giving all of that away.
ChadNauseam 1y ago
You answered why someone would want to pay $93, but not why they have to pay $93.
hiatus 1y ago
There's a limit though right? How about, if you can accurately predict the doctor's diagnosis it's free? If not you pay. This person needed a doctor's approval presumably for a prescription they couldn't get without authorization which leads to this gatekeeping. Not to mention also contributes to the insane medical costs in the US. $93 for 5 minutes is over 1k _an hour_ for what amounts to a rubber stamp (because how much can you really dig into a person's medical history and condition in 5 mins).

const_cast 1y ago

The only reason this worked is because your situation was exceedingly simple. The trouble is you are not educated enough to tell what is simple and what isn't. A cough could be a cough or it could be something more serious, only a "real" examination will reveal that. And sometimes even that's not enough, you need an examination by a specialists. I'll tell you a story. Once upon a time I got pain in my balls. I went to a doctor and he felt around and he said he didn't feel anything. I went to another doctor and he felt something, but he had no idea what it was. He said could be a cyst, could be a swollen vein, could be an infection - he didn't even know if it was on the testicle or on the tube thingy. Then I went to a Urologist. You can tell this man has felt up a lot of balls. He felt me up and said, "yup, that's a tumor" almost immediately. He was right, of course, and he ended up being the one to remove it too. Since I caught the cancer pretty early the chemotherapy wasn't too intense. Point is, expertise matters when things aren't straight forward. Then, experience and perspective gets to shine.

senordevnyc 1y ago
I don't think this is the slam-dunk you think it is. You had to go to three doctors before someone recognized something was wrong. ChatGPT is the substitute for the first two doctors, not the third. And even there, I bet ChatGPT would have told you to go see a doctor, since it can't feel your balls. And after your first appointment, if you had told it that you still thought something was wrong, it would probably have told you to go see a urologist.
- threecheese 1y ago
  I fall slightly on the “doomer” side of the safety spectrum, but if I’m being honest I’ll be first in line - rain, sleet, or snow - to buy the chatgpt that can!
- slg 1y ago
  >And even there, I bet ChatGPT would have told you to go see a doctor So what is the value add of ChatGPT in this scenario? Either it says you don't need to see the doctor which could very well kill you or it tells you to visit the doctor and it doesn't actually help you in any way.

djtango 1y ago

Yes and being able to buy and take whatever you want has led to rampant antibiotics abuse. Unfortunately medicine at the high level always has to cater to the lowest common denominator. Personally, while I agree AI can probably take up some of the mundane triage I have some reservations about AI in its current LLM form being a good judge as patients are unreliable narrators and doctors rely on many senses and heuristics to make their recommendations. An AI fine tuned to be a doctor with perfect health data and patient history is an interesting prospect, especially given the loss of the "family doctor" but that kind of data collection is a way away and has other Pandora's box considerations

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
- AStonesThrow 1y ago
  Um, I hate to burst your bubble, but antibiotics are not prescribed at all for viral infections, because viruses are not vulnerable to antibiotics. Therefore you are definitely right about the current and traditional "best cure" for the flu! Antibiotics must only be prescribed against bacterial type infections, and that is indeed one of the reasons a physician's consult is required, so that the physician can discern whether it's viral or bacterial, and choose an appropriate course of action. Malpractice indeed for making such a rookie mistake. Pneumonia, being frequently caused by bacteria, is definitely something they'll prescribe antibiotics for, so a positive diagnosis would be a key first step there. So it is quite telling, isn't it, that many people believe that taking antibiotics can cure viral infections, because if they were OTC they could really get abused in that respect, couldn't they!