The reality is that modern medicine is absolutely amazing, but there are also many interventions backed by shoddy science or no science at all. Sometimes, "doing your own research" exposes such lapses. Sometimes, it sends you off the deep end and you end up chasing ghosts. To allow the former, you need to tolerate some of the latter.

And yeah, sometimes the shoddy science involves interventions so basic and so common that you'd think they're sorted out. Consider that Europe and the US take wildly divergent views on topics such as wisdom teeth, colonoscopies, or the value of flu vaccines.

"Science literacy" doesn't shield you from being wrong. Maybe it helps, but there's no shortage of Nobel laureates who believe in conspiracy theories or promote dubious medical treatments. Talking about "science literacy" is usually just how geeks convince themselves that their beliefs can't be wrong.

Every generation the advice on which way to put your kid to sleep flip flops.

It would be shamefully foolish to disregard all the incredible advances and technologies that modern medicine offers. It would be equally shamefully foolish to think it’s not still deeply flawed.

We'll make life changing decisions based on the opinion/advice of 1 individual, while shopping around on a home project or car repair that's +/- $5k.

It seems again like a combination of shortage of medical workers and the indirect nature of medical payment. If I knew up front that walking in and getting 3 medical opinions would cost me X, and I didn't need any pre-approval from insurance, or risk denials.. I'd just go do it more. But the system is so opaque that I don't know I can get those answers readily, or believe the numbers are real and won't result in random bills later.

Further, the next step after figuring out the cost of getting options would then e getting a quote for the actual resulting medical care recommends is opaque due to differing payment %s & co-pays by procedure, etc.

I had a really bad sprain about two years ago to the point where my partner had to help me on and off the toilet. Eventually I took off work, went to urgent care, and paid $200 for them to basically say "well it's not broken, we could do an MRI otherwise we don't know what you want us to do". Booking an appointment with a GP would have taken around a month. They won't be able to do anything long term but will recommend a physical therapist. All said and done it's probably a $5-10k ordeal and weeks until I could actually see any progress, plus work time missed. Big surprise, I didn't actually end up going to see a doctor. Recovery sucked and some movements still aren't quite right.

There’s nothing more quintessentially American than “not knowing how much you are going to pay for something until you owe it.” You go for a hospital visit and nobody has even a remote, order-of-magnitude idea of what you are going to pay. But you have to sign a doc right away that says “you agree to pay whatever number we eventually come up with!” And then you slowly get dozens of bills from individual doctors and hospital workers over the next 4 months. It’s absurd.

Indeed. In my country we have a public healthcare system. I also have private insurance, which I use sometimes because you can get consultations and tests much faster; but I wouldn't do anything invasive with the private insurance before getting an opinion from a public doctor first. The incentives aren't well aligned in private healthcare. For me, the combo (trust diganoses from the public system more, but use private when convenient) seems to work well.

Public healthcare doesn't cover dentists, though, and to be honest, from other people's experience, I don't trust them much. I haven't visited one in over 20 years, and so far I haven't experienced pain or any other annoying symptoms other than some slight gum bleeding once per year or so which seems to resolve by itself by brushing and flossing more thoroughly than normal for a few days. I know it's risky and this may come to bite me later. Fingers crossed.