Why Does the US make it so hard to be a doctor?
theatlantic.com
Why Does the US make it so hard to be a doctor?
1–10 of 48 posts
Re: Why Does the US make it so hard to be a doctor?
#2Health economist here.
This is a great piece top to bottom. There is no credible objection I'm aware of to any of the deregulation proposals included herein. The American Medical Association will object, because they don't want the competition because it will have a negative effect on its members' incomes.
If you think health care is too expensive in the US, the changes proposed herein are Job 1. There is no reason why Mexican, Canadian, British, Indian, German, ... doctors should not be allowed to come and practice in the US with more than some cursory verification that they actually attended a medical school where they are from. There is no reason for anyone in the US to be denied a slot at medical school (not a particular medical school, but some medical school in general).
One final note: please don't be fooled into have sympathy for the large debts doctors incur through medical school. This is not the population which is deserving of student debt relief. I'm happy to shorten their education, of course, but doctors are consistently among the very highest paid people in American society. Retiring even a million dollars in debt (much larger than any number in this article) is not that hard on a highly-paid specialists' salary, which can easily average half a million dollars per year.
The author of the piece has proposed to do further pieces on an "Abundance Agenda" for the US. Essentially this looks at ways to increase supply in things which are currently expensive but don't have to be. I haven't read other parts of it but I strongly recommended following him and looking further into the idea.
Re: Why Does the US make it so hard to be a doctor?
#3Re: Why Does the US make it so hard to be a doctor?
#4A medical doctor
Just letting lurkers know the article is not about PhD programs or academia in general, as I half expected
Re: Why Does the US make it so hard to be a doctor?
#5Health economist here. This is a great piece top to bottom. There is no credible objection I'm aware of to any of the deregulation proposals included herein. The American Medical Association will object, because they don't want the competition because it will have a negative effect on its members' incomes. If you think health care is too expensive in the US, the changes proposed herein are Job 1. There is no reason w…
> they don't want the competition because it will have a negative effect on its members' incomes.
Is it the perception that increased competition will have negative effects on members' incomes or is that actually true? I swear I remember a story, study, allegory about a second doctor moving to town and both incomes went up.
Re: Why Does the US make it so hard to be a doctor?
#6Health economist here. This is a great piece top to bottom. There is no credible objection I'm aware of to any of the deregulation proposals included herein. The American Medical Association will object, because they don't want the competition because it will have a negative effect on its members' incomes. If you think health care is too expensive in the US, the changes proposed herein are Job 1. There is no reason w…
I have a hard time rectifying the claim that you are a health economist with the fact that you don’t appear to understand that the bottleneck for increasing the supply of doctors is the number of residency slots. Foreign medical school certifications are largely accepted at face value but graduating a foreign residency program largely is not. I think it’s pretty much universal that each country wants doctors to go through their own version of residency.
My wife is a physician. She needs a large salary to pay off her large medical debt. When the medical debt is paid off her salary will still be large. A much more sensible system would to make medical school free so that the salaries don’t have to start off so high. There are people with hundreds of thousands in med school debt who didn’t match. We should feel sorry for those people.
Re: Why Does the US make it so hard to be a doctor?
#7The U.S. spent $3,795.4 billion on health care in 2019 - where did it go?
https://www.ama-assn.org/sites/ama-assn.org/files/styles/rel...
Re: Why Does the US make it so hard to be a doctor?
#8Health economist here. This is a great piece top to bottom. There is no credible objection I'm aware of to any of the deregulation proposals included herein. The American Medical Association will object, because they don't want the competition because it will have a negative effect on its members' incomes. If you think health care is too expensive in the US, the changes proposed herein are Job 1. There is no reason w…
I have a hard time rectifying the claim that you are a health economist with the fact that you don’t appear to understand that the bottleneck for increasing the supply of doctors is the number of residency slots. Foreign medical school certifications are largely accepted at face value but graduating a foreign residency program largely is not. I think it’s pretty much universal that each country wants doctors to go th…
The limit of residency slots is in the article.
> A much more sensible system would to make medical school free so that the salaries don’t have to start off so high.
That's not how any labor market works. Your salary isn't determined by how much debt you rack up. Doctor's salary's are high because the supply of doctor's is so low (especially primary care).
The article covers all the points you're debating (much better than I).
Re: Why Does the US make it so hard to be a doctor?
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a hard time rectifying the claim that you are a health economist with the fact that you don’t appear to understand that the bottleneck for increasing the supply of doctors is the number of residency slots. Foreign medical school certifications are largely accepted at face value but graduating a foreign residency program largely is not. I think it’s pretty much universal that each country wants doctors to go th…
The limit of residency slots is in the article. > A much more sensible system would to make medical school free so that the salaries don’t have to start off so high. That's not how any labor market works. Your salary isn't determined by how much debt you rack up. Doctor's salary's are high because the supply of doctor's is so low (especially primary care). The article covers all the points you're debating (much bette…
> That's not how any labor market works. Your salary isn't determined by how much debt you rack up.
True, or else college dropouts from a private school will have higher incomes than a state school undergrad, which is not the case at all.
Re: Why Does the US make it so hard to be a doctor?
#10Health economist here. This is a great piece top to bottom. There is no credible objection I'm aware of to any of the deregulation proposals included herein. The American Medical Association will object, because they don't want the competition because it will have a negative effect on its members' incomes. If you think health care is too expensive in the US, the changes proposed herein are Job 1. There is no reason w…
I have a hard time rectifying the claim that you are a health economist with the fact that you don’t appear to understand that the bottleneck for increasing the supply of doctors is the number of residency slots. Foreign medical school certifications are largely accepted at face value but graduating a foreign residency program largely is not. I think it’s pretty much universal that each country wants doctors to go th…
To be perfectly honest, i have found primary care doctors pretty useless in the last 5 - 10 years, not only did i find that their answers were things i could easily find on google, i also noticed that most of them didn't actually care about patient well being. It seems like most doctors these days are only in it for the money, which is fine if they are actually providing a valuable service, but low level doctors are nothing more than glorified drug dealers at this point.