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U.S. plans to stop recommending most childhood vaccines, defer to doctors
(www.washingtonpost.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2025
172 points (98.3% liked)
politics
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Edit/preface: If the down votes are because people think this position is antivax, they've got reading comprehension issues. This post is a warning of where US healthcare is, and where it is heading.
You have far too much faith in doctors, and more importantly the massive industry that is healthcare.
They will do what will deliver the most profit to the system.
Lemme tell you something...no mechanic ever made a great living just doing oil changes. They'd make a lot more money doing engine rebuilds.
So once the majority of the mechanic industrial complex is owned by a colluding group of conglomerates, they can all agree that oil changes aren't recommended anymore. They'll stop stocking as much oil and filters. They'll tack on additional shop fees for disposal and materials. They'll stop taking walk-ins. They'll make it as hard as possible to get an oil change.
Meanwhile, there will be some car owners that would think about this for two seconds and ask "are you on fucking crack? Of course you need to change the damn oil". But the mechanic will say some mumbo jumbo about synthetics and AI and most drivers will just believe it.
There will still be trustworthy independent mechanics, but not for very long. They'll be spending all their time doing oil changes and not making nearly as much money as the conglomerates.
And then what's the point in spending all that time, money, and effort getting ASE certified...to waste your time doing oil changes while those other mechanics sold their souls to live like kings?
I've been a lot more cynical of hospitals since realizing that my wife and I got "up-sold" to a cesarean child birth.
Mechanic here. I make FAR more money doing oil changes than engine rebuilds.
Edit: and not just because there are far more oil changes. I mean the time a vehicle is occupying a spot in the garage vs the overall profit, is far better for oil changes than engine rebuilds.
Ok, sure, fine, that's probably factually inaccurate, idk I'm not a mechanic, I just play one on an occasional weekend.
But you follow the metaphor? You know that there will be a segment of drivers that would see through the lie and realize that they obviously should change their oil...but you also know that the vast majority of drivers would just agree because insert mechanic techo babble from corporate sales floor.
Like should I trust Volkswagen is truthfully handling emissions because they say so, or should I trust the scientific method which discovered and then confirmed the scandal?
Trust your damn doctor. It's your fault otherwise.
I think you misunderstood my comment. It's not that I don't trust my doctor, it's that I'm skeptical of profit-driven healthcare. Vaccines are oil changes; having your kid die of preventable disease are the engine rebuilds.
Trust and skepticism are not mutually exclusive, and people need to realize that.
I'd love to trust my doctor, and I feel like I can, because I live near a coastal city and most of our doctors actually follow the science. Smaller hospitals and private practice are generally alright but they are disappearing fast by these massive "healthcare systems". And the doctors have to upsell or they get cut loose.
Meanwhile smaller hospitals and private practice is becoming increasingly difficult to administer. Look at the staff ratio at any private practice office. How many office staff to medical staff. That's unsustainable.
Pharmacies are seeing the same fate. Look at how few independent pharmacies still exist. Pretty much everything else is CVS (and their pharmacy benefit management, Caremark...and given the state of both industries that whole arrangement should be broken up by antitrust laws).
And when there's medication shortages, those independent pharmacies have the hardest time reliably obtaining product while CVS scoops up all of it.
So now good honest doctors and good honest pharmacists are just as hard to come by as a good honest mechanics. Given enough time and lack of regulation, they are bound to become about as common as good, honest cops.
Profit-driven healthcare will do what brings in the most money before killing you...and that means skipping preventative maintenance (oil changes and vaccines) and upsells (clear coat protection and elective c-sections).
We are put into a position where we have to put blind faith into a system that is openly corrupt. One where people feel a need to educate themselves, while also lacking any education.
My brother-in-law is a pharmacist for a major hospital network (and prior to that, a major retail chain). He's riddled with stage 4 tumors all over his body. His oncologist gave him 90 days, two years ago.
He's convinced the ivermectin and vitamins are what has been keeping him alive (and everyone on that whole limb of the family will gladly tell you all about it...fortunately he's my wife's step-sister's husband, so not really "related"), and not the elaborate cutting-edge real treatments that have been pumped into his system. That's "what's killing him" (their words...)
Should I trust him for medical advice? He's clearly long since drank the Koolaid and is a babbling idiot, but he's a medical professional, and not even an outlier.
I work for doctors. They literally can’t upsell because insurance won’t pay.
Your doctor makes a bullet pointed list of diagnosed conditions called medical codes. A licensed medical coder (whose license is dependent on accuracy) reviews the doctors codes and edits the bill to only charge for conditions that are within the scope of the specialty and justified by the data collected in the visit notes.
The bill is then passed to the insurance company who has their own medical coders who review the work of the previous medical coder. If they believe the bill is inaccurate, it is reviewed by another doctor who works for the insurance company. If the bill is determined to still be inaccurate, the insurance company refuses to pay and kicks the bill back to the practice.
If many bills are determined to be inaccurate, the medical practice is audited to see if there has been a pattern of upcharging or inaccurate coding.
This is the point where a multi-million dollar lawsuit can start, and the practice finds themselves in court to have a judge determine if they should be paid for their work. If they lose those lawsuits, they lose coverage from the whole insurance company, and that is how a practice goes bankrupt.
Don’t get me wrong—for profit healthcare can lead to problems, but believe it or not, the system is designed to keep things above board and make sure that people are charged accurately.
The real issue is that each insurance company has contracts with each network of practices to pay them a designated percentage of the overall bill as a deal to keep them in network, so healthcare costs are extremely high because the practice will only get a percentage of the billed cost as pursuant to the individual agreement with that insurance provider. If you have to pay out of pocket because you went out of network, you are eating a huge cost while an in practice provider would be getting much less money after it was processed by your insurance company.
That's why we need proper oversight and regulations. Is the threat of anything ever going to go away? No. I don't blindly trust anyone, but we need to be able to know there is some reliability somewhere.
It's not a matter of whether you believe in the science, but if you understand the science.
That's exactly what I'm saying?
I'd trust the WHO before I'd trust the CDC (currently)...primarily because the WHO is aligned with the scientific consensus, while the CDC isn't.
But now? If my doctor works for a medical conglomerate? And the CEO is saying to follow this CDC's lead? That's a significant hit for my doctor's credibility. Now if my doctor's recommendation is aligning with the CDC and not the WHO, which should I trust?
I know which one I would trust, but what about the typical patient?