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The planning of U.S. physician shortages (2020)

niskanencenter.org

231–240 of 377 posts

Re: The planning of U.S. physician shortages (2020)

#231

Being a physician is a horrible career move right now. As a former Math/CS major turned eye surgeon, I can't help but think about how much easier my life would be had I stuck with tech. It's hard to understand exactly how hard the job is until you've lived it. I saw 40 patient's in clinic today in 8 hours without lunch or any kind of downtime and then spent 2 hours at the hospital because a patient needed an emergent…

> Physician salaries are the only ones that do not grow relative to inflation Spoken with the true conviction of a position of privilege, and blinded by the very same. (No pun intended.) Hint: The majority of U.S. citizens have it worse than you.

So what? Making a doctor’s life better doesn’t preclude making everyone else’s life better. I think we should buoy everyone who isn’t in the capital class. This crab bucket mentality has got to go.

Re: The planning of U.S. physician shortages (2020)

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've no doubt the stress of your work is immense and the constant threat of litigation (and the expense of the insurance to fight it) can be overwhelming. As a recipient of multiple eye surgeries (I had strabismus as a kid), I am grateful for competent professionals like you. But I think you buried the lede. In the 2010s I owned a high-end bicycle and sporting good store. It was 7 days of 10+ hours a day most weeks.…

> But I think you buried the lede. > In retrospect, I've concluded that the real problem they faced is they'd built a life dependent on a physician or surgeon's income. They were told they were building a castle, but instead they built a prison. The fact is, you just can't spend enough money to truly escape the stresses of your work, but you can certainly spend enough money to become shackled to it. I don't know why…

I made the leap because of what the parent plainly stated:

> There's just no reason to do the job when you can get the same compensation working remotely in tech.

Same compensation. That’s the unique qualifier that was chosen. That’s certainly not no indication.

Re: The planning of U.S. physician shortages (2020)

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've no doubt the stress of your work is immense and the constant threat of litigation (and the expense of the insurance to fight it) can be overwhelming. As a recipient of multiple eye surgeries (I had strabismus as a kid), I am grateful for competent professionals like you. But I think you buried the lede. In the 2010s I owned a high-end bicycle and sporting good store. It was 7 days of 10+ hours a day most weeks.…

The grass is always greener in another profession, and my problems are always uniquely bad :)

from over here it sure looks like mine are worse

Re: The planning of U.S. physician shortages (2020)

#234
post #203

There is also planning of hospital bed shortages through certificates of need. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_of_need anti kickback laws are also a double edged sword. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stark_Law But in the end, the usa has the healthcare system where doctors want to work and rich patients want to be treated given an option of any country.

The rich people I know in the US do have an option of getting their healthcare from any other country, and that is what they often do.

Yeah, rich people are "Global citizens" and utilize the entire work as we do the county we live in.

Re: The planning of U.S. physician shortages (2020)

#235
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This needs explanation. If there is such an extreme shortage of talent, why can't doctors demand better terms, e.g. shorter hours?

They can, just not alone. If they were to unionize in sufficient numbers, there would be nothing to do but meet the demands. But “unions are bad” is the prevailing belief in the US, not to mention the huge amount of efforts that companies and the government go through to suppress them.

Many physicians still work in sole proprietorships or partnerships. From an employment perspective they are management, not labor.

Some physicians working as employees of large provider organizations are unionized. The government doesn't do anything to suppress this. Rather the opposite.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/27949...

Re: The planning of U.S. physician shortages (2020)

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never worked for a FAANG company, or anything close, and can usually not get in the front door at any "prestigious" company. In my last round of interviews nearly all startups/small companies I talked to where offering 200k+ for remote senior engineers. It's not hard to break 200k remote as a software engineer. If you're not there I highly recommend you start looking around, even in this market, rather than si…

Do you make 300k? You said it was “easy to get” so surely you’re above that?

Yes and so do all of my teammates and every senior engineer at a publicly traded company you've likely never heard of.

Again it's pretty standard anywhere in tech right now, startup or otherwise, to get 200k base + equity. Technically most startups I've chatted with also offer 300k+ TC... but that assumes the equity component eventually becomes liquid.

Around 200k base is very easy to get anywhere right now, and getting larger than that is a factor of how liquid your equity is. If you join a publicly traded company you should easily be able to get 200k base + 100k/year of RSUs

And to be clear: I'm talking about Senior Engineer level in the US. Most of these roles I've looked at are remote so the NY/SV part is not necessary.

edit: your profile says you work at a FAANG so this should be old news for you.

Re: The planning of U.S. physician shortages (2020)

#237

Being a physician is a horrible career move right now. As a former Math/CS major turned eye surgeon, I can't help but think about how much easier my life would be had I stuck with tech. It's hard to understand exactly how hard the job is until you've lived it. I saw 40 patient's in clinic today in 8 hours without lunch or any kind of downtime and then spent 2 hours at the hospital because a patient needed an emergent…

I've no doubt the stress of your work is immense and the constant threat of litigation (and the expense of the insurance to fight it) can be overwhelming. As a recipient of multiple eye surgeries (I had strabismus as a kid), I am grateful for competent professionals like you. But I think you buried the lede. In the 2010s I owned a high-end bicycle and sporting good store. It was 7 days of 10+ hours a day most weeks.…

I know doctors who live a modest lifestyle, so it can be done. The leader of a band that I play in was an ER doctor for a while, then got a job at a walk-in care clinic, and retired at a young enough age to enjoy his retirement. During this entire time, he lived in a modest house, and mostly rode his bike to work. He lived within his means like the rest of us.

There's no law that you have to live a rich lifestyle. Part of that may be feeling the need to maintain the class status that you were born into, and that you expect your kids to be born into. Case in point, my friend came from a working class background.

Re: The planning of U.S. physician shortages (2020)

#238

Being a physician is a horrible career move right now. As a former Math/CS major turned eye surgeon, I can't help but think about how much easier my life would be had I stuck with tech. It's hard to understand exactly how hard the job is until you've lived it. I saw 40 patient's in clinic today in 8 hours without lunch or any kind of downtime and then spent 2 hours at the hospital because a patient needed an emergent…

> That said, is anyone hiring an ophthalmologist with CS and Math degrees? As someone who recently transitioned to a tech role, I'd urge you to focus on applying to companies related to your existing fields (ophthalmology, medicine, surgery, and their derivatives) who happen to be seeking SWE's, rather than general tech companies. Especially Series A, B, C startups. Look up all the companies that make your equipment…

Companies in the healthcare technology space typically prefer to hire physicians as product managers rather than engineers. There's a shortage of product managers who understand clinical workflows. Lots of job openings.

Re: The planning of U.S. physician shortages (2020)

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like we are going too far. Central planning in presence of hostile adversaries unrestricted by any ethical systems failed. And by what measures has “free market” has proven itself as successful? You can come up with your measures of success and others will propose measures of shortcoming. Others will even dispute the claim the American-led west is anything different from a centrally planned set of cooperating…

Central planning, in this context, is not the same as political philosophy. So be careful not to conflate the two. Central planning does happen in free-market economies all the time, at various levels. An HOA for example is a hyper-local example of central planning. The larger the scale the stronger the lever, and hence the more variable the result. The "free market" brings all kinds of its own oroblems of course - I…

Haha, I love "Central Planning" is viewed as a bad thing by most normal Americans - like the commies are the only ones doing it.

It takes a huge amount of "Central Planning" for our economy to function - as its fundamentally based on the concept of delayed gratification.

Those concepts are very very similar. Any American that has worked and budgeted towards any financial goal should be able to see that for what it is... essentially the same thing.

Re: The planning of U.S. physician shortages (2020)

#240
post #192
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Critics of mostly free market systems generally base their argument on a comparison of wealth levels in such systems. They implicitly assume (or don’t care) that in a planned system the total wealth would be the same, just distributed differently. There is little evidence to support this.

Correct. Moreover, if you shift the goalposts (wealth is no longer/can’t be primarily defined by a balance in a bank account) then society will adapt and create different wealth constructs to make up for it. So, you’ll have the government caste with nicer perks and opportunities, and then everyone else from there on down.

Haha, yeah but it will all different people getting the perks than those with perks now
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