It’s behind a pay wall for me, but doctor salaries are a pretty small fraction of the pie. We get squeezed the most since we have the weakest lobby.
Agree.
We're also the only ones who don't have Medicare reimbursement indexed to inflation. Not only that, but often Medicare reimbursement is decreased. Private insurance largely follows Medicare.
Stagnant, if not outright declining, reimbursement plus increased cost of delivering care (EMR requirements, etc) leaves only a few options for private practice physicians: see more patients to make more (typically most docs initial response, though it accelerates burnout), or sell your practice--typically to a large healthcare corporation. And data shows patient care declines when cared for employed physicians (with a few exceptions, like Mayo, Kaiser, etc). Part of that has do with physicians are reporting to MBAs/venture capitalists rather than physician/nurse leaders.
Unfortunately we see fewer hospitals led by physicians and nurses, as healthcare shifts more from a calling to a business/career. An MBA can run a more efficient hospital. But can we acknowledge that we don't need extreme ruthless efficiency in every aspect of our life? Perhaps things like healthcare, education, should be efficient, but maybe those are things too sacred for venture capital and the idea of maximizing profits at every turn and only providing the bare legal minimum for the patients who aren't profitable. At the rate we're going, churches will start being gobble up by venture capitalists...
On a side note, I meet very few people who are angry/upset at physicians making the salaries they do. Most are slightly envious, but physicians still have a lot of respect with the general population--we're among the most respected professions in the US. In a society that typically associates value and importance, people typically want the people entrusted with their lives to be well paid.
CEO's and midlevel managers on the other hand...
