Hacker News Reader

Comment by thecyborganizer | Hacker News Reader

Dr. H. Jack Geiger famously wrote prescriptions for groceries out of his clinic in Mississippi - when challenged on the practice, he replied, "Yeah, well, the last time I looked in my medical textbooks, they said the specific therapy for malnutrition was food."

The best doctors understand that a patient is an entire person, not just some specific problem or disease. Sometimes that means considering factors in their life other than the obvious direct medical causes of their problems. Sometimes that might include the availability of treatments, based on cost or location.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._Jack_Geiger

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/28/health/h-jack-geiger-dead...

View on HN

Famous because it's folksy nonsense, not because it pioneered medicine.

> Sometimes that might include the availability of treatments

this is about coupons. your doctor won't help you write your resume, even if they could and it would help you afford medicine in the future. That isn't their domain.

Doctors are specialists.

Some doctors are like you're describing. I posit that the best doctors are ones who realize that the domain of "health" is broad and encompasses things that aren't germs.

Geiger believed that the greatest threat to public health of his day was nuclear war, so he founded an organization (Physicians for Social Responsibility) to try to stop it, because he thought that would be more effective than waiting for the bombs to fall and trying to treat the victims.

You can disagree with his assessment, or the efficacy of his methods, but it's pretty unfair to dismiss them as "nonsense".

ok, so should they do your taxes too?

not exactly the same as founding an ethics foundation in their own field

> who realize that the domain of "health" is broad and encompasses things that aren't germs.

what things? mental health? still medical, and still deferred to specialists.

Coupon hunting? Resume writing? not medicine.

It feels like you are being deliberately obtuse. This is not about taxes. A doctor who does everything that another doctor PLUS making sure you can afford your medications and will be able to take them appropriately will be a better solution for many people than just a doctor who doesn't do that. That is all.

> PLUS making sure you can afford your medications

ok.

> This is not about taxes

why not? Maybe you are missing the point I am making, but then you are selectively not responding to things I already wrote, that I think I outlined pretty clearly in the last post.

what is out of scope here? Where does it end? You suggest a doctor should do more somehow, but doesn't say where the limit is, if any. the point is your own arguments seem to apply to taxes, resumes, coupons etc as much as anything else more medically related.

I think it's pretty rich complaining about me being "obtuse", when you fail to address the main point of my posts.

I think taxes are out of scope but I do not think knowing medications are out of scope. I would call the medications reasonable and the taxes unreasonable. Maybe that is the limit?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com