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Why doctors are sick of their profession

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Re: Why doctors are sick of their profession

#221

Post by ArkyBeagle »

dalke wrote: post #99
ArkyBeagle wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very good point - although you'd think it would be possible to have models and feedback for models that would scale. I expect the "higher GDP" tells us a lot. I first discussed this with my Dad when we took one of us the the Emergency Room for stitches ( it just wasn't a summer as a kid without a bike wreck or something leading to stitches ) and I was shocked by the bill - in 1972. I'd be pressed to find the referenc…

> I'd be pressed to find the reference, but people have shown that proportional percent of income ( in the aggregate, GDP ) spent on medical care has been consistent between countries. There's a couple of tables related to that at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_heal... . US is an outlier, with a total health expenditure of 17.7% of GDP. Otherwise, yes, most similar countries (Germany, France,…

Thanks! That's exactly it.

Re: Why doctors are sick of their profession

#222

Post by vacri »

jasonisalive wrote: post #120
vacri wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When were doctors ever 'lower-middle class' in any western society?

Any time right up until the 1950s I would say. I don't know what you'd call the status of mid-19th century doctors in Britain, for example, but they definitely weren't upper class.

'lower-middle class' is the lower part of the middle class. It's not "lower or middle class". Lower-middle, middle-middle, upper-middle. If it was 'lower or middle', that'd make even less sense - university-educated professionals being part of the working class demographic, at a time when university was an oddity rather than the norm?

Re: Why doctors are sick of their profession

#223

Post by vacri »

MaysonL wrote: post #132
vacri wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When were doctors ever 'lower-middle class' in any western society?

When I was a kid in the '50s, our family doctor lived and had his office in a house little larger than ours, in much the same neighborhood as ours: definitely middle class.

I didn't say not middle class, I said not lower-middle class. Doctors as a demographic have never been lower-middle class.

Re: Why doctors are sick of their profession

#224

Post by dmfdmf »

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #211
dmfdmf wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This a wordy and intellectually sounding repudiation of reason, nothing more.

If you seriously believe that, you are indeed being an idiot. Your logic reasoning skills may be pretty good, which is a component of reason that many people lack. What you seem to lack is a useful mapping between reality and propositions. And from false premises, unfortunately, even flawless logical derivation cannot produce any useful information about the world. When wwweston critizes your black-and-white thinking…

> even flawless logical derivation cannot produce any useful information about the world.

This is the analytic-synthetic dichotomy that derives from Kant's false theory of concepts and I reject it. I won't argue the point as my comments are for the Aristotelians in the audience not the Kantians.

Re: Why doctors are sick of their profession

#225

Post by dmfdmf »

jasonisalive wrote: post #139
tim333 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>when they agreed that people had a right to medical services ... It was self-imposed slavery... We've had rights to medical services in most of the developed world outside the US for decades. Doctors have high salaries and reasonable conditions for the most part. Funny version of slavery.

The use of the term "slavery" here is pretty standard rhetoric used for emphasis by the American libertarian movement; its use descends from the vocabulary developed by the body of anti-Socialist thinkers in the early to mid-20th century. A more sophisticated rhetorician would argue that the various bodies of your society (those who pay for the universal medical services via taxation, those who partake of the medical…

Freedom is not a rhetorical device as you charge. It is an important social principle with a specific meaning and how we understand social issues. By your method the fundamental principles of physics like causality or conservation of energy, etc. would be "mere" rhetorical tricks not means of understanding the world.

Re: Why doctors are sick of their profession

#226

Post by wtbob »

vacri wrote: post #111
wtbob wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right that the current healthcare industry is far from a free market, but javert too is right that the golden age of American healthcare was when it was far closer to a free market. Interestingly, the golden age for physicians' personal wealth was during the socialisation phase, as they were able to pocket fees increasingly paid by insurers, leading to a quintupling in income. They went from lower-middle class…

When were doctors ever 'lower-middle class' in any western society?

From the article physicians averaged $50,000/year in 2010 dollars back in the 30s or 40s. $50,000/year in 2010 was lower middle class. It's enough to live on, but certainly not enough to be comfortable, especially with a family, not is it enough to save much.

Re: Why doctors are sick of their profession

#227

Post by ConceptJunkie »

alexqgb wrote: post #63
toasted wrote: post #38

Non-US anaesthesiologist here. I love my job and relish going to work each morning. I spend almost no time on non-clinical paperwork. I work reasonable hours, have some busy on-call shifts but am generally well supported by my department. I earn good money in the state system - enough to raise a family comfortably and have a nice house, but not silly money. I pay no malpractice insurance, but pay $400 annually to a n…

It's not true to say that the US, in general, ignores these systems when in fact, a significant portion of the US population pays very close attention to them and would like nothing more than to seem them implemented here. There is, however, a significant minority of really horrible, angry, violent, and generally racist people who feel deeply and ideologically threatened by the social contract on which these systems…

> really horrible, angry, violent, and generally racist people

Bigoted commenter is really a bigot.

Thanks, you saved me from reading your post. If you had something worth saying, you blew your chance by starting out insulting me.

Re: Why doctors are sick of their profession

#228

Post by ConceptJunkie »

theoh wrote: post #186
mariodiana wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"really horrible, angry, violent, and generally racist people" Seek help.

The language is a bit exaggerated but I don't think it deserves such an offensive dismissal. There is plenty of evidence that conservatives have those traits, not to mention that it is a widely held belief, which is enough to make it an acceptable comment. See for example http://faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/jost.glaser.political-c...

Bigoted commenter is bigoted. Bigoted commenter excuses his bigotry by claiming that "everyone else does it".

Re: Why doctors are sick of their profession

#229

Post by ConceptJunkie »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #135
dmfdmf wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not clear how anyone can make someone else embarrassed for views they don't share. I'd have more respect for you if you called me an idiot for my views but your embarrassment at my claims makes me think that you actually know the truth, but lack the courage to rethink it. > we [doctors] could do a better job advocating for ourselves... Its all just negotiating the terms of your slavery if you agree that people ha…

Would you say that policemen and soldiers are slaves, too? In a sense, their job is to maintain and enforce civil rights for the rest of us.

They are slaves if it is considered that people have a "right" to their services... in other words, policemen and soldiers are legally and morally required to do their jobs even if there isn't money to pay them, which would be the case if there was such a right.

The same is true for health care. If you actually had an inalienable right to health care, then you could require a doctor to provide you service whether he wanted to or not. That's slavery, and why it is absolutely illogical that there can be a "right" to something that is material and finite. This isn't politics, it's simple logic.

Re: Why doctors are sick of their profession

#230

Post by rquantz »

hvidgaard wrote: post #197
jval wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politics is all about the money. Obviously administration is worse at scale too, but it comes down to political will in having the money to do it. The way you keep a political union together without having it break apart is by limiting the amount of things the members of the union have to share. If you start taxing rich states and funnelling the money over to poor states, you give people a reason to want to break out…

New Yorkers aren't going to "pay for Idaho". NY may be paying more in tax for the entire state, but their budget would also be much larger. For obvious reasons NY can be more efficient, but that doesn't mean that they'll be paying a significant amount of the budget in Idaho.

New Yorkers are already paying for Idaho, and every other backwards, poor, uneducated, unpopulated state. And we talk about leaving the Union all the time, but that isn't why. It's because those same backwards, poor, uneducated, unpopulated states whose roads, schools, and healthcare we pay for keep blocking our attempts to turn the United States into a modern developed country.
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