This shouldn’t be a power struggle. It’s not zero-sum.

Define zero-sum in the context you’re using.

While it shouldn't be, it is. The first example that springs to mind is women and people of color being perceived as low pain tolerant or outright disbelieved.

I’m a white male, in the United States, and I’ve had sleep apnea since 2019.

Every doctor I’ve visited in-state has told me I didn’t have it. 3 sleep studies: “You don’t have sleep apnea.” I told them about heart palpitations, and was asked, “what does that have to do with sleep apnea.” I told them about nightmares and waking up in the middle of the night, gasping for air. Migraines. Excessive sleeping during daytime hours.

I finally went out of state, because all the doctors in my state operate under the same big umbrella corporation. First test they ran. . . excessive sleep apnea.

Now, my original sleep tests from 2019 are missing. So. . . Yeah, let’s think of things in terms of power dynamics.

Did you mean to post this on shittyasklemmy?

There’s a power imbalance between insurance companies and the insured. Dr. Says you need x, insurance company says no you don’t.

Yes, absolutely. I’ve been with my mom to many doctor’s appointments for various things, usually pain of some kind.

Literally every time we’ve gone, they take maybe 5 minutes out of their day to pop in the exam room, give her a once-over up and down, then ask a couple questions and prescribe a bullshit medication that literally doesn’t work. It’s just throwing money down the drain at this point.

And I know it’s location-dependent. A couple years ago she was traveling out of state to California and had to go to a doctor for something while she was out there. She told me the difference between Midwest and West Coast healthcare is almost literally might and day.

This answer only applies to the nightmare hellscape of American healthcare.

Absolutely. Patients can’t argue against care in an informed way and have no way to navigate to affordable and effective care. Each mistake costs more time, money, and sometimes health consequences.

Medical care provider delays, doesn’t commit, doesn’t care or just makes a mistake? Costs them nothing at all. Get billed. That medication didn’t work for you? Here try another one. Don’t agree? Get a referral and get another bill. Don’t like me? Doesn’t matter. Not like you picked me as a doctor because of my reputation. If you go with someone else the clinic will assign some other patient to me that won’t be as picky or know better

As someone with a few autoimmune disorders, the most effective way to assess a doctor is to see if they talk with you or at you. If they talk at you during the first appointment, it’s best to cut em loose and keep looking until you find one who talks with you. This, along with having a decent knowledge base of the topic at hand, prevents you from having a power tripping M.D. and also makes getting proper medical attention much easier!

I don’t really understand the question but if we keep it simple, medical care providers are trained to provide healthcare while most patients are not. That seems like a power imbalance from inception.

Patients can refuse treatment and go to different medical providers but do the providers really care? They have a crammed schedule and see patients for like 10 minutes.

🤪 Collective action to bring about socialized medicine? I sleep. Anarchistic means to reduce dependency? what is that?

Idea. In order to not get stuck in this power struggle, let’s engineer a patient separatist movement, where we begin to decenter medical institutions! We tell patients that they don’t actually need the care to begin with. If they cling on, we chastise them with new vocabulary! Teehee!

💯

At least in America. There are way more protections systematically and culturally for doctors than patients.

Like, a doctor can just look you up and down, call you fat and a slur and maybe your problem anxiety. If you want to take them to court, they have better shit for that and it’s your word against theirs.

Add the long history of class issues and god complexes and its a shit show.

Of course, it’s part of basic medical training. Any service provider has an inherent power differential due to their much greater knowledge on the subject, and medical fields amplify that to various degrees because the person’s health and well-being are potentially on the line.