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>I felt silly, but really everyone that I dealt with was cool about it.

Twice in my life I've presented at the ER with severe chest pain that I thought was heart-related, twice it turned out to be nothing serious (musculo-skeletal pain in one case, very bad indigestion in another), and both times I felt like a fucking idiot for even just showing up, let alone after being told I just need to eat more fruit and shit more often.

But at no point did anyone in the hospital, from the cleaning staff to the nurses to the doctors to the x-ray technicians to the people at the front desk, ever make me feel unwelcome or that I had wasted their time.

When I apologised to a nurse for taking up space in a bed that should have been put to better use for someone who was actually ill, she sat down next to me for a moment and told me that she would rather I was wrong a thousand times and "wasted" a thousand beds in hospital, than right one time and dead at home because I was trying to avoid embarrassment.

About 2 years ago I started feeling some chest pains at night. I was just over 40 at the time. I phoned the NHS helpline, who had a paramedic at my house within 1 minute (literally) and she hooked me up to a portable ekg. She found nothing wrong but thought it was a good idea to go to hospital. She stayed with me till the ambulance arrived about 45 minutes later. Ambulance staff was brilliant, and everyone at the hospital too. I checked out about 3 hours later after free everything (x rays, blood tests, egg, etc). I know the NHS has some problems, but they were outstanding in all respects that night, and not havin to even think about the financial side was pretty good too.

Regarding insurance, I wonder if you would have gone in if you were Keith, who at 35 is working sales at a department store. He might not even have been insured.

Want to disrupt the heart attack market?

Make a small home machine that can take an EKG and tell you if everything is fine, or if you should go get checked.

Adjust it to give some false positives, but no false negatives.

Make it cost around $50, and make sure it's fully reusable (i.e. you can borrow one from a friend for a quick check).

If machine learning is not up to the task, then send the EKG to a doctor, I believe they can read them in just seconds (correct me if I'm wrong), so it should not be expensive per-person.

To simplify it, have it connect via bluetooth to a phone, so you don't need to worry about WiFi, or a display. For reliability have it store the last 10 readings, even if not connected, so it should have a start button and indicator lights.

This is already a thing apparently (I never tried it so I cannot vouch for it's accuracy/reliability):

https://www.amazon.com/AliveCor-Kardia-Mobile-Android-device...

That only checks for atrial fibrillation, not heart attack.

An EKG machine cannot tell you whether you're fine or not. Not all heart attacks show up on EKGs, which is why the hospital will do a blood test for Troponin, too. A home Trop test would do what you want, but it can take several hours for the test to turn positive, and the hours between the onset of pain and the blood test showing that you're having a heart attack should really be spent attached to a cardiac monitor and in the presence of trained medical personnel, i.e. in hospital.

<quote> Want to disrupt the heart attack market?</quote>

Might be a good idea! Just don't stop there and be more ambitious. Kill the heart attack market as much as you can by making this technology widely available to those that need it at no cost. Find different ways to earn something from it...

If there is one thing that has been proven over and over again, it's that the market and health care don't go together in terms of efficiency. I'm not even touching the ethics angle here...

When I hear the n-th iteration of the basic income discussion and the "useless" class, health care strikes me as the area to make a real difference in, much more than "basic income". Because even the "useless" class will find ways to sustain itself, given adequate health.

Food as well. When I worked at a grocery store, it boggled my mind to watch food stamps families buy frozen meals. I wasn't on food stamps but I was paycheck to paycheck, what made me aware that it was cheaper and healthier to buy dry beans and raw veggies but them, unaware?

I don't think they're unaware. Frozen meals don't require preparation, when you're poor the mindset is very different, there were some really good articles on HN about that, I can't find them but for instance:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/12/junk-food-cravings-a...

Good luck with the lawsuits when your machine gives the wrong answer.

Only two answers possible:

* go see a doctor

* urgently go see a doctor!

Then you get sued to pay for unnecessary bills.

doctors have insurance for when they do the same thing, there's probably something similar available.

> make sure it's fully reusable (i.e. you can borrow one from a friend for a quick check)

No, just put 24-hour machines in malls, then you don't need to delay going to market trying to get it under $50

The fuck is that country where working sales at 35 is wrong and an indication you might not have insurance despite having a job O_o

Seneca talks about this a lot. When I first started going to war in my early twenties, I began confronting my own mortality, and found myself slowly being funneled towards the great Stoics.

I thank you for your service. I think the Stoics are criminally underread. Yet I am having some mild discomfort accepting such profundities from someone named, ah, fapjacks. Just sayin'.

Profundity is where you find it, not where you look for it.

That's profound

Humans have found different ways to deal with their own mortality - denial or religion or saying that's "natural". More people learn, their techniques have also changed, like (almost) no one thinks you/somebody died because it rained the day before and the rain gods spite you for doing XYZ.

My point being, drawing from the practices of people multiple centuries ago might not be the best thing

> My point being, drawing from the practices of people multiple centuries ago might not be the best thing

Given how much of cognitive behavioral therapy borrows from stoicism in this case I think this assessment is premature. Stoicism like buddhism are great philosophies on how to deal with the world as it is. And to understand that most of the problems we think of are products of our own mind.

Stoicism doesn't do either denial or say its natural. It forces you to reevaluate how you think of the question. For that alone it is worth drawing from.

It sounds like you haven't actually read Stoic philosophy. The central theme of the Stoics is that how you react to your situation and surroundings is entirely up to you. When someone spills coffee on you at Starbucks (or whatever), they aren't the ones making you mad. If you think Stoics are outdated, go read what Stockdale has to say about the philosophy and how it served him as a POW in Vietnam. I think once you've actually consumed (and grokked) what the Stoics said, you'll see that it's a philosophy that is timeless and as relevant as ever.

Your country amazes me. Where I live if you call the hotline for medical advice and describe anything that sounds like heartattack they are obliged to tell you to go to the hospital and wants to send an ambulance. I know because I was in one and felt supercity when it was a torn muscle

Yeah. The thought of not going to see a doctor or not calling an ambulance because it might cost me something is literally unfathomable.

Keith smoked. Smoking increases your risk of heart attack or myocardial infarction, amongst others. There's been a lot of public awareness campaigns on the dangers of smoking and in 2017, I can't believe he wasn't aware of them. Continuing smoking was a conscious decision.