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Doctors Unionize to Resist the Medical Machine

nytimes.com

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Re: Doctors Unionize to Resist the Medical Machine

#61

Post by pragone »

potatote wrote: post #6

One thing that I never understood about the US medical education is the requirement of the bachelor's degree (pre-med) before applying for most med schools. In my home country and many others, you can directly apply to med school. Now that the college costs are quite considerably expensive, four-additional year of college studies simply adds to the cost of becoming a doctor and therefore, the newly minted doctors exp…

It's a bit pedantic, but most medical schools don't actually require a bachelor's degree. They do, however, require something in the order of 80+ credits worth of classes, at which point you might as well finish the degree.

Personally, I think it's a good requirement. It forces people to spend a bit more time maturing before they finish school, and it also providers an opportunity to pursue a different field before entering medical school, or provides a different background when practicing clinically.

I also can certainly agree that not having it can be beneficial in points you mentioned as well

Re: Doctors Unionize to Resist the Medical Machine

#62

Post by hardcandy »

ubernostrum wrote: post #24
c3534l wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa, calm down now. No need to resort to an ad hominem and speculate on someone's personal motivations.

I don't really see it as pure ad hominem; it's a demonstrable fact that malpractice insurance rates are not tied to malpractice award amounts, and that capping malpractice awards does not rein in the absurd ballooning of malpractice rates.

Malpractice insurance rates are not tied to malpractice award amounts? Unless rates were fixed by law and financially guaranteed by the Government, how on earth would that even be possible. Are you just a troll?

Re: Doctors Unionize to Resist the Medical Machine

#63

Post by [deleted] »

EliRivers wrote: post #54
ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is 175K not absurd? Only a white collar engineer in SF would say that's a piddly salary. Wake me up when your doctor friend has to commute in from Stockton.

Don't forget that it's also standard to have accumulated hundreds of thousands of dollars by the age of 30. What are you, some kind of pathetic loser outside the Software Master Race making the median US salary of about 35000?

[deleted]

Re: Doctors Unionize to Resist the Medical Machine

#64

Post by [deleted] »

EliRivers wrote: post #54
ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is 175K not absurd? Only a white collar engineer in SF would say that's a piddly salary. Wake me up when your doctor friend has to commute in from Stockton.

Don't forget that it's also standard to have accumulated hundreds of thousands of dollars by the age of 30. What are you, some kind of pathetic loser outside the Software Master Race making the median US salary of about 35000?

[deleted]

Re: Doctors Unionize to Resist the Medical Machine

#65

Post by sayhar »

nostromo wrote: post #3

For what it's worth, people have been calling the AMA a union by another name for several decades. http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngoodman/2014/09/03/the-docto... They lobby, they control the supply of doctors, they restrict competition, and they even engage in price fixing: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/how-a-secret... They shape a lot of medical legislation, for example killing the Affordable Care…

> They lobby, they control the supply of doctors, they restrict competition, and they even engage in price fixing

It saddens me that those are your go-to ideas of what a union is.

> The AMA was key in killing Truman's universal healthcare proposal starting in 1945.

Actual unions have been pushing for universal healthcare for much earlier than I was born. On this front AMA has been the enemy of real organized labor for decades.

A real union is about workers banding together to stand up to a boss who says "fuck me or you're fired", or to resist management giving themselves millions while cutting pay for workers.

Please don't dishonor the good name of organized labor by comparing them to the millionaire doctors who killed our chances for a sane healthcare system.

Re: Doctors Unionize to Resist the Medical Machine

#66

Post by krisdol »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #30
XorNot wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yes, the moral duty American colleges feel for ensuring a rounded education at the low low price of tens of thousands of dollars per year.

My CS degree focused on a rounded education, which would have been okay if it had also taught me how to, say, write a useful program. I didn't realize 'til I'd graduated that I would have to teach myself if I wanted a career.

To be fair it was never called a degree in programming.

Re: Doctors Unionize to Resist the Medical Machine

#67

Post by JamesBarney »

carbocation wrote: post #60
bradleyjg wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Doctors are already paid absurd salaries in the US >To put it in context, when I finish all my training, I will owe over $600,000. > It's not the doctors being "paid absurd salaries" that makes medical care in this country expensive. It's lawyers - malpractice insurance can take upwards of 25+% of your income - and it's insurance companies, who have shareholders they are responsible to, and it's hospital administr…

As of ~2012, physician compensation was something like 8.5% of healthcare spending in the USA. This means that in the United States, physician compensation is actually a smaller component of healthcare costs than it is in the UK (where it's ~10% of overall cost).

This is because the U.S spends 2.6 times as much on health care per capita as the united kingdom.

Re: Doctors Unionize to Resist the Medical Machine

#68

Post by knowaveragejoe »

douche wrote: post #33
induscreep wrote: post #28

I don't understand this about healthcare in the USA. Why not import a few thousand doctors from Asia through H1Bs, and drive down the cost of medical care? Remove artificial caps on licenses imposed by the AMA while at it.

Culturally, I suspect this would not go over well. There are a shocking number of people that would be less than impressed to be served by a doctor with a non-Anglo-Saxon last name, even if they spoke perfect English. Especially older people, who are the largest consumers of healthcare.

I don't think this is true. A "shocking number" doesn't mean "the majority" or anywhere close to it in this case, but rather more than there should be(none).

Re: Doctors Unionize to Resist the Medical Machine

#69

Post by caycep »

induscreep wrote: post #28

I don't understand this about healthcare in the USA. Why not import a few thousand doctors from Asia through H1Bs, and drive down the cost of medical care? Remove artificial caps on licenses imposed by the AMA while at it.

Because the cost of healthcare isn't doctor's salaries. It's nursing care, medicines, hospital care and administrative fees.

Re: Doctors Unionize to Resist the Medical Machine

#70

Post by caycep »

nostromo wrote: post #3

For what it's worth, people have been calling the AMA a union by another name for several decades. http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngoodman/2014/09/03/the-docto... They lobby, they control the supply of doctors, they restrict competition, and they even engage in price fixing: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/how-a-secret... They shape a lot of medical legislation, for example killing the Affordable Care…

That being said, when looking at the pie charts of where all the healthcare dollars go, MD/DO, and even nursing salaries are a tiny slice of the pie. Most of it goes to administrator and insurance fees, followed by nursing home and ICU level care, followed by hospital costs, medicine costs. AMA isn't really the big problem here.
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