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Comment by daeken | Hacker News Reader

My doctor sends out a monthly newsletter sharing things he finds interesting or useful, medical news, etc. Just this weekend he covered this study and shared his own thoughts on this, which I'll summarize since I haven't asked his permission to share verbatim:

This study does show a strong correlation but doesn't attempt to show causation. If cannabis users are significantly different than non-users in terms of activity levels or diet, or the ways they manage anxiety/pain/boredom, this could cause skewing. Since people use cannabis to treat (however effectively) various conditions, what is the risk of those conditions going untreated?

I thought this was a good analysis; glad to see a bit of desensationalism.

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How did you find a doctor like this? If I wanted to get a doctor who communicates with patients and visibly stays up to date, where should I go?

He was recommended by my therapist. Essentially runs an all-inclusive, boutique medical service; expensive, but actually turned out to be cheaper than all the services I'd previously had to use, for the best care of my life. That said, he only sees a limited number of patients (actually just closed new memberships from the web, only accepting referrals until he hits his cap) and only in Georgia.

I imagine there are other boutique providers out there, but this has been a first for me and given me hope that healthcare might not be so goddamn awful for everyone eventually.

Just to tail off this and explain the business model, searching for “direct primary care” is a good way to find this type of physician.

A lot of these smaller shops start under the “DPC” label to build up a client base, charging something like $75-150/mo for unlimited primary care services. When the practice starts to hit its limits, they close off new patient signups, and start offering “concierge” signups at ~4x the DPC rate. The concierge patients are basically the whales who make the business model profitable (and I don’t mean to use that label as a pejorative).

Huh, that business model honestly makes a lot of sense and -- ignoring the time component -- could be helpful for accessibility. My doctor has flat pricing for all members (he makes it public on the site, and included advance notice of an increase in his newsletter), but it is way out of reach for most folks. Not that 300 members goes that far either, but it's tough.

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