Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 531 posts

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#111

Post by briandear »

karmajunkie wrote: post #77
gk1 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my (limited) understanding, the high cost of malpractice insurance that doctors must pay is what drives up the cost of healthcare, more so than their student debt.

This has been conclusive disproven by comparing what happened in different states that enacted tort reform for medical malpractice. The cost of insurance dropped a bit, but there has been no effect the cost of healthcare provisioning.

I would argue that it hasn't been "conclusively" disproven. One key study "disproved" it in the aggregate across all insurance, but not on a specific specialty-by-specialty basis[1]. The malpractice costs of OB-GYN's for example are reflective of the potentially catastrophic tort liability exposure despite an overall low level of influence of tort reform on insurance costs generally.

However, this study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3536953/ demonstrated that tort reform resulted in a larger percentage of growth in the number of physicians which would indicate that tort reform does have an important effect on medical care provisioning simply because tort reform, according to that study, resulted in a larger number of practitioners, which would, necessarily increase access to care.

So while tort reform may not have reduced costs across all of insurance, it does have an effect on medical care supply and it could have an effect on costs on a specialty-by-specialty basis.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5701901/

"An important consideration when interpreting our results is that our analysis provides evidence that the Texas reform had little influence on levels of health insurance losses, in the aggregate, across a variety of patient groups and provider specialties... As a result, if tort reform’s effects on provider behavior differ by the provider’s specialty type or the type of patient, then different analyses presented in the literature, utilizing different but relatively homogenous samples of provider or insured types, may yield conflicting results regarding the influence of malpractice exposure on healthcare cost and health insurance markets. Further research may consider how specific provider specialties and patient groups are influenced by changes in medical malpractice liability exposure."

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#112

Post by xcbxx »

jordigh wrote: post #90
DoofusOfDeath wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a wealthy Stanford alumni Grammar tip: In English, the word "alumnus" is typically declined as it would be in Latin. Especially amongst academics, I'd say. So if you're writing for that audience, the appropriate forms of "alumnus" are, I think, as follows [0]: "alumnus" - One male, or one person of unspecified sex. "alumna" - One female. "alumnae" - Multiple females. "alumni" - Multiple persons whose sex is all mal…

I rarely hear that anymore. I almost always hear "alumni" in all cases. I've tried saying to the librarians of my alma mater that I'm an alumnus and they repeat back to me, "oh, you're an alumni, sure, let me get you alumni access to our system." Maybe it's common somewhere else to make those distinctions, but they're not common at McGill.

It sounds immensely uneducated though. But the distinction between plural and singular seems to be abolished in other useless taxpayer-funded fields, too...

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#113

Post by scarface74 »

naveen99 wrote: post #102
scarface74 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I’m glad that billionaires are donating, why should colleges be dependent on the largess of private benefactors to ensure that our healthcare system is sustainable?

we want the most capable doctors. This will help keep more of top candidates from choosing other careers.

I didnt mean to imply that the donors were doing anything wrong, but that the government should do more to make sure that there are enough qualified general practitioners and obstetricians. There is far more of a need for those specialties than higher paying plastic surgeons.

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#116

Post by gcheong »

notyourwork wrote: post #65
aabajian wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did a prelim-surgery intern year. The hours are worse than medicine, but there are way less "mandatory" activities (no lectures, no endless rounding, etc.). For the most part, you're on the floor waiting for pages. I used the time between pages to write code. Now I'm a radiology resident and have much more time.

> the time between pages to write code. Makes me feel like a slacker for not studying medicine or law while I'm waiting for my code to compile.

All those wasted sword fights. https://3d.xkcd.com/303/

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#117

Post by hackandtrip »

sf_rob wrote: post #32

I'll probably be downvoted on a forum like this, but I worry about the most successful universities using their funds to subsidize those who would be fine without it. I was actually made aware of this by a wealthy Stanford alumni which has a fairly broad program for undergraduate tuition assistance. Graduates of mid/low tier universities seem more and more likely to have to compete with better credentialed people wit…

Completely different situation, but something like that is discussed in Italy too, where the majority and most prestigious university happen to be public: why should we make the tuition free for everyone, specially when it's so low here, refusing the moneys of more riches people that pay more?

The natural solution is invest more in scholarships, at least here. I'm sure that the situation in US is fully different though.

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#118

Post by jriot »

pandler wrote: post #76
aabajian wrote: post #4

This is amazing. I graduated from medical school two years ago with $300,000 in debt. I'm a software developer on the side and would love to stop residency to try a healthcare startup and/or pursue a research, but the risk is too great - I need the attending salary to pay off the debt.

I’ve started thinking of the obligation to stick in industry to pay off my loans as an analog to having an organization like the US military pay for my degree. I have a few friends in the military studying at university for free. Their payment for those degrees essentially consists of X number years of obligatory post-degree military service, in addition to whatever military obligations during their study. [1] It’s a…

I was active duty military for over 10 years. I went to bootcamp shortly after my 18th birthday. My job required 6 years service obligation; air traffic control. Before I separated I had my bachelors and two masters degrees paid for.

Most of your tuition is covered while you are active duty, $750 per credit hour. If not you can tap into your GI Bill to pay the rest; I did this as I didn't want to fund any of it. Though I could have paid the difference, saving my GI Bill, which would have netted more money for school.

Overall, you analogy is correct. But the military is an easy route when you are 18 - 22 (easier than most people think), as most jobs are not combat related. My job provided services to the general public as well.

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#119

Post by briandear »

dnomad wrote: post #101
chimeracoder wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hope this helps to decrease the costs of medical care in the US to some extent as it removes one pressure for doctors to earn extra money charging for things that might not need to be needed. Physician earnings account for about 7% of total spending on healthcare. Of that 7%, the fraction due to student debt specifically is significant from the physician's perspective, but negligible from a systemic picture. This…

That's a very strange way to consider salaries. 7% of the healthcare output is extraordinary. By any measure US doctors are obscenely overpaid for what is ultimately not very creative or challenging work. On average US doctors earn 2-5x more than doctors in other developed countries [1] -- while delivering significantly worse healthcare outcomes. Some estimates put this "excess income" at an extra $100 billion a year…

> On average US doctors earn 2-5x more than doctors in other developed countries

Software developers also make 2-5x more than developers in other developed countries. So do many other professions.

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#120

Post by monocasa »

sf_rob wrote: post #32

I'll probably be downvoted on a forum like this, but I worry about the most successful universities using their funds to subsidize those who would be fine without it. I was actually made aware of this by a wealthy Stanford alumni which has a fairly broad program for undergraduate tuition assistance. Graduates of mid/low tier universities seem more and more likely to have to compete with better credentialed people wit…

IDK. The same thought process led me to not being able to complete college due to financial reasons.

Despite being emancipated, FAFSA still considers you a dependent until you're 24. I was told that only with documentation of leaving an abusive household would a dependency exception grant be applied. So according to FAFSA I was supposed to use all this money that I didn't have to pay for college. By 24 I had dropped out and gotten a development job, now putting me outside of the income level where I'd get even federal loans (and quite frankly I still can't take on that debt load).

Just make college free. Trying to make all of these complicated rules to make sure that a few people aren't "getting one over us" is just making more cracks for people to fall into. If you're concerned that the rich are going to somehow use the system without paying, structure the backing tax so that they pay their fair share. No one cares that high school is free for the rich too. Everyone pays in, everyone can participate.

Post reply on HN