U.S. Physicians are paid far more relatively than in any other country.

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I would not doubt that US physicians tend to make more money on average than physicians of other countries. Aside from the reasons others have already listed (longer hrs, additional costs, etc) the US tends to have a higher standard of living as our GDP is greater than other countries' GDP. If you look at most other industries or positions you will find that the US worker has a higher income.

If we're going to ask physicians to align their incomes with those in other countries that are less economically powerful we should ask all professions to as well. An arguement could be made that this would drive down prices as labor would be cheaper and maybe more manufactoring would return to the US because managers, laborers etc. would be making a fraction of what they do now!

This is a stupid idea but so is suggesting that US physicians be paid the same as in other countries so consumers receive care at a premium.

Health care spending is a problem because we cannot afford the social contracts that were made between the government and the voters. We cannot afford to provide everyone with a lamborghini; we also cannot afford to provide everyone with limitless health care. There is nothing wrong with that - patients should either buy health insurance and make that part of their monthly nut to crack - or be subject to welfare that may not cover everything which will allow some to slip through the cracks.
 
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Second, I love certain things about the US and hate other things. There is so many things to love about this country. However, Americans like to make comments about other countries when Americans are (sadly) one of the least educated when it comes to any country outside of their own and base your opinions on embarrassingly wrong stereotypes.
Translated: everyone takes the time to learn about the USA. US citizens do not take the time to learn about other countries. Therefore there must not be greener pastures for US citizens. :)
 
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The US training to become a doctor is 4 years of high school, 4 years of college, 4 years of medical school then a 3-10 year residency. In the rest of the world, it's more like 4 years of high school, 6 years of medical school then either you are licensed to practice, or you can enter a residency which is nothing like the US residency. US residencies are intense training periods where you work 60-100 hours a week for years on end before becoming fully licensed while EU style residencies are capped at something like 46 hours a week. Finally, US doctors continue to work 10-20 hours more per week than EU physicians.

He covered this... however o would argue that an earlier more dedicated education does not make a better physician. The system he describes selects students before they can reasonably be filtered for drive, ability, and dedication, and spends 2 extra years grinding the material into someone who may only ever be capable of regurgitating out the memorized clinical vignettes.
 
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Sure you can blame the cost of medical education but doing that is not going to change the mess of unaffordable healthcare in the country. The obvious solution is to simply not attend high cost schools but obviously the drive for prestige & success won't let that happen (see law school) and these students will just end up being disgruntled and a detriment to the profession.

This is one aspect of the astronomical US healthcare costs that will surely be addressed to get back in line with OECD averages, so expect salaries to go down significantly. Please just don't incessantly whine about this when you're a doc, you should know what you're going into.

Go **** yourself. If you want to be like the europeans then go live in europe.
 
+1

Also when random folks with no money use the ER, we are paying for that too

We are paying for all this stuff anyway, I would rather some of that money go towards getting these folks "free" PCP's for like 1k a year instead of waiting ten years for the 100k hospital bill.

That's my philosophy as well. Hospitals already have to subsidize their losses from the unpaid bills by charging private/government payers more, so we're already paying for it. We might as well pay for it in a more efficient manner and provide primary care that will not only be cheaper than the ER initially but also prevent a manageable chronic condition like diabetes from being neglected and turning into frequent, expensive hospital admissions that could have been prevented. Some hospitals are doing it on their own and saving money. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/25/health/25insure.html?fta=y
 
Translated: everyone takes the time to learn about the USA. US citizens do not take the time to learn about other countries. Therefore there must not be greener pastures for US citizens. :)

Totally. The rest of the world has worse obesity rates, more debt, more crime, less employment, and certainly felt the recession more. Oh and the rest of the world pays more for their health care. When its available, a large % change afford it either. :laugh: 'MERICA!
 
Totally. The rest of the world has worse obesity rates, more debt, more crime, less employment, and certainly felt the recession more. Oh and the rest of the world pays more for their health care. When its available, a large % change afford it either. :laugh: 'MERICA!

because all old gear heads memorize the specs for the 87 ford Taurus and know nothing about Porsches.
And Mary Ann Bevan has more google hits than Jessica Alba.
There is literally no correlation between interest and quality and identifying a smudge on an otherwise cherry stingray makes it automatically no more valuable than a rusty spare rim
Just sayin ;)
 
I would not doubt that US physicians tend to make more money on average than physicians of other countries. Aside from the reasons others have already listed (longer hrs, additional costs, etc) the US tends to have a higher standard of living as our GDP is greater than other countries' GDP. If you look at most other industries or positions you will find that the US worker has a higher income.

If we're going to ask physicians to align their incomes with those in other countries that are less economically powerful we should ask all professions to as well. An arguement could be made that this would drive down prices as labor would be cheaper and maybe more manufactoring would return to the US because managers, laborers etc. would be making a fraction of what they do now!

This is a stupid idea but so is suggesting that US physicians be paid the same as in other countries so consumers receive care at a premium.

Health care spending is a problem because we cannot afford the social contracts that were made between the government and the voters. We cannot afford to provide everyone with a lamborghini; we also cannot afford to provide everyone with limitless health care. There is nothing wrong with that - patients should either buy health insurance and make that part of their monthly nut to crack - or be subject to welfare that may not cover everything which will allow some to slip through the cracks.

The graphs at the beginning are normalized for GDP per capita (PPP). Most of the countries in Western Europe have comparable or greater GDP per capita than the US. The graphs posted at the beginning are normalized for everything except schooling costs and opportunity costs by US doctors. Regardless of whether or not you believe US docs are underpaid/overpaid, it's pretty clear that they are paid more than the rest of the world (once all factors are normalized).
 
I was only mentioning nominal GDP; not GDP per capita. Per capita is not a useful metric in this discussion.

The country with the closest GDP to us is China which has a GDP of about half of the US.

I do not see that the graphs are normalized for anything else other than currency & PPP.

I agree. US doctors are paid a greater amount than the rest of the world.


The graphs at the beginning are normalized for GDP per capita (PPP). Most of the countries in Western Europe have comparable or greater GDP per capita than the US. The graphs posted at the beginning are normalized for everything except schooling costs and opportunity costs by US doctors. Regardless of whether or not you believe US docs are underpaid/overpaid, it's pretty clear that they are paid more than the rest of the world (once all factors are normalized).
 
I was only mentioning nominal GDP; not GDP per capita. Per capita is not a useful metric in this discussion.

The country with the closest GDP to us is China which has a GDP of about half of the US.

I do not see that the graphs are normalized for anything else other than currency & PPP.

I agree. US doctors are paid a greater amount than the rest of the world.

Nominal GDP is rarely ever useful and is also not very useful for this discussion. For example, you bring up China which has about half our GDP. According to nominal GDP since China has the 2nd largest economy, their doctors should be paid the second highest in the world and higher than anywhere in Europe. That's not the case because the PPP and GDP per capita are much less than the US and Europe. Just because a country has a large GDP means nothing in terms of salary
 
Why do people never understand that these salary arguments really don't matter? To compare:

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Citation: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?volume=307&issue=14&page=1513

The LOWEST estimate for overtreatment ALONE is $158 billion annually.

Physician salaries are $216 billion. Even if you cut salaries by 40% you barely touch the LOW estimate for fraud and abuse savings wise.

It all depends on how you cut the data too. As percentage of overall health care expenditures the US is actually about the lowest.

http://www.surgistrategies.com/news/2012/05/u-s-physician-compensation-among-lowest-of-wester.aspx
 
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