What jobs make more than doctors?

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Dont go into medicine for the money.

Opportunity cost. You loose 10 years of your life in school. This also means relationships. Forget about your friends and social life for most of your training.

School loans. Astronomical.

Age. You are old and tired by the time you are ready to START your career.

Compensation; physicians make less and less every year, consistently. No indication this is going to reverse.

EVERYBODY hates you; the fed government wants to turn you into an indentured servant with socialized medicine. The state wants to regulate you out of existence and replace you with know-nothing midlevels like nurse practitioners, who by the way are very insistent to call themselves "Doctors" to obfuscate who they are to their trusting patients. The public hates you because 1) they feel you make too much money 2) healthcare is a "right" and therefore you are a greedy, selfish person for expecting to be paid for your decades of sacrifice and training (funny they have no problem with the vampiric leech hospital administrator making $800,000 doing nothing but making money off YOUR work, or their evil med-mal attorney suing you at a $600/hr rate, thereby making money off YOUR work in reverse!!!).

Big negative nobody else has: medicolegal risk. You are at CONSTANT risk of being sued. You WILL be sued, for certain, unless you do some form of NON clinical medicine. Even if you win, or the case is dropped, you will have constant angst, anxiety, and possible guilt about the case possibly for years (some of these suits last a long time).

Patients will sue for the stupidest reasons. I was sued by a patient in which my procedure HELPED him...documented on his pain logs and follow up visits. No complications at all. In other words, he benefitted in every dimension from the procedure. He sued me anyway because his workers comp case was closing and he wanted money and did not care who he hurt in the process. His suit was so baseless his own attorneys fired him and refused to represent him. Therefore he represented himself in the suit. The judge finally dismissed the case as groundless. But this whole process took almost a year.

By the time you are in practice, private practice will be eliminated by state and federal forces and you will be a hospital employee at best, federal employee at worst. We all know the federal government never, ever does a good job at anything other than propagating itself. Things will get much, much worse.

If you are smart enough to get into med school, and you are most concerned about money, do not go into medicine. Go into anything else. Chances are with your brains you'll do well.

The only reason to go into medicine is if:
1. You are rich (or get a full med school scholarship/very cheap med school tuition if that exists any longer) and can pay for the school debt and have no concerns about future income
2. You cannot be happy doing anything else.
as a nontrad going into medicine this is so demoralizing, and sad.

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@Ligament is absolutely spot on.
Salary does not equal wealth. Too much opportunity cost and debt to become a physician. Salaries for sub-specialists are still very good but by no means assume that it will be “guaranteed” to be there when you finish training, much less an entire 30 year career. There are many forces constantly trying to pay you less.

When you are at the end of a 28 hour shift treating rude drug-addicts, tired as ****, stressed from potentially killing someone, in 1/3 of a million dollars of debt, and yet despite having worked much harder than most of your non-medical peers are getting paid $13/hr in your late 20s (and staring down another 5 years of this ****) you absolutely must have something else to keep you going. It would be insane to go through this for money.
 
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I'm sorry, I certainly do not want to demoralize anybody but this is the state of affairs for physicians for the past 30+ years. If I was a non-trad I would be very, very cautious.
cautions why exactly (non-trad here), could you please expand on that? what do you think the main problem for us would be?
 
Here’s a new class of partners at one Big Law firm. Notice anything??

F6CBCD2C-2F0D-44CC-99EB-53A1B71A8177.jpeg
 
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Oprahologist...

You get a diagnosis!
You get a diagnosis!
You get a diagnosis!
 
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Dont go into medicine for the money.

Opportunity cost. You loose 10 years of your life in school. This also means relationships. Forget about your friends and social life for most of your training.

School loans. Astronomical.

Age. You are old and tired by the time you are ready to START your career.

Compensation; physicians make less and less every year, consistently. No indication this is going to reverse.

EVERYBODY hates you; the fed government wants to turn you into an indentured servant with socialized medicine. The state wants to regulate you out of existence and replace you with know-nothing midlevels like nurse practitioners, who by the way are very insistent to call themselves "Doctors" to obfuscate who they are to their trusting patients. The public hates you because 1) they feel you make too much money 2) healthcare is a "right" and therefore you are a greedy, selfish person for expecting to be paid for your decades of sacrifice and training (funny they have no problem with the vampiric leech hospital administrator making $800,000 doing nothing but making money off YOUR work, or their evil med-mal attorney suing you at a $600/hr rate, thereby making money off YOUR work in reverse!!!).

Big negative nobody else has: medicolegal risk. You are at CONSTANT risk of being sued. You WILL be sued, for certain, unless you do some form of NON clinical medicine. Even if you win, or the case is dropped, you will have constant angst, anxiety, and possible guilt about the case possibly for years (some of these suits last a long time).

Patients will sue for the stupidest reasons. I was sued by a patient in which my procedure HELPED him...documented on his pain logs and follow up visits. No complications at all. In other words, he benefitted in every dimension from the procedure. He sued me anyway because his workers comp case was closing and he wanted money and did not care who he hurt in the process. His suit was so baseless his own attorneys fired him and refused to represent him. Therefore he represented himself in the suit. The judge finally dismissed the case as groundless. But this whole process took almost a year.

By the time you are in practice, private practice will be eliminated by state and federal forces and you will be a hospital employee at best, federal employee at worst. We all know the federal government never, ever does a good job at anything other than propagating itself. Things will get much, much worse.

If you are smart enough to get into med school, and you are most concerned about money, do not go into medicine. Go into anything else. Chances are with your brains you'll do well.

The only reason to go into medicine is if:
1. You are rich (or get a full med school scholarship/very cheap med school tuition if that exists any longer) and can pay for the school debt and have no concerns about future income
2. You cannot be happy doing anything else.


Jesus Christ........can I at least invest my salary into the restaurant or real estate industry? I do not think I would be happy doing anything else, but medicine is not my sole ambition, and I am hoping it will serve as both a financial and social resource to my other endeavors. But I am increasingly reading about how engrossing medicine is, and now I am wondering just how practical it is for one to penetrate a non-healthcare industry in the private sector while devoting the necessary time to their medical career.
 
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Jesus Christ........can I at least invest my salary into the restaurant or real estate industry? I do not think I would be happy doing anything else, but medicine is not my sole ambition, and I am hoping it will serve as both a financial and social resource to my other endeavors. But I am increasingly reading about how engrossing medicine is, and now I am wondering just how practical it is for one to penetrate a non-healthcare industry in the private sector while devoting the necessary time to their medical career.
I totally see myself opening a dive bar as a retirement plan! why not? no one said that you cannot explore other options. I know a lot of doctors who do something else on the side. One of my friends invests in real estate, I know another one who is a musician, another one is opening a wine bar with his wife. WHy not?
 
I’m hoping to do real estate, reasturant, and a potential political career as well
 
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You think that having one single payer system would have more useless people than 100 different competing insurance systems?

100% yes. I've worked at both state and city run (NYC public hospital) institutions that have an insane amount of useless administrators and generally lazy people who are bad at their job but cannot be fired. I've also worked private hospitals that are run with pristine efficiency because they see through the bull**** and fire people who are dead weight. The state and city hospitals would not hold a candlelight to the amount of waste and useless baggage a single payer system would bring. The majority of private sectors run circles around the federal equivalents in efficiency and quality.

I don't expect an MS1 to understand these things but keep spouting information you clearly don't comprehend or have real world experience with.
 
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100% yes. I've worked at both state and city run (NYC public hospital) institutions that have an insane amount of useless administrators and generally lazy people who are bad at their job but cannot be fired. I've also worked private hospitals that are run with pristine efficiency because they see through the bull**** and fire people who are dead weight. The state and city hospitals would not hold a candlelight to the amount of waste and useless baggage a single payer system would bring.

I don't expect an MS1 to understand these things but keep spouting information you clearly don't comprehend or have real world experience with.
I don’t understand hence why I am engaging. I have preconceived notions that I would love to be corrected because it is generally better to be more informed than not.

Not even an MS1, applicant fresh off the presses. I am here to learn, not just to feel right!

So with the state and city hospitals, what is the reasoning behind so many administrative staff? Do the hospitals still have to deal with different insurance companies/regulatory requirements etc? What, in your opinion, would improve that system if anything?
 
100% yes. I've worked at both state and city run (NYC public hospital) institutions that have an insane amount of useless administrators and generally lazy people who are bad at their job but cannot be fired. I've also worked private hospitals that are run with pristine efficiency because they see through the bull**** and fire people who are dead weight. The state and city hospitals would not hold a candlelight to the amount of waste and useless baggage a single payer system would bring. The majority of private sectors run circles around the federal equivalents in efficiency and quality.

I don't expect an MS1 to understand these things but keep spouting information you clearly don't comprehend or have real world experience with.

The federal goverment fails miserably at everything it does, particularly health care.
 
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The federal goverment fails miserably at everything it does, particularly health care.
What do you think it is about the US government that would prevent it from achieving a single payer system? If the majority of other (industrialized) countries can establish a single payer system in some form then it is obviously not a flaw inherent to the work of any government, just ours?

Edit: Not a changed question, I literally just want to know the perspective on this.
 
Also want to add the Medicare is never used alone without a supplemental from a private carrier.
never is a strong word. I have seen plenty of patients come in with medicare as their only insurance.
 
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What do you think it is about the US government that would prevent it from achieving a single payer system? If the majority of other (industrialized) countries can establish a single payer system in some form then it is obviously not a flaw inherent to the work of any government, just ours?

Edit: Not a changed question, I literally just want to know the perspective on this.

Socialized medicine is a horrible thing, hence not a goal. We don't want a single payer system. The government needs to get out of the doctor patient relationship. Socialized medicine is a disaster. Socialism itself is a disaster.

I have Canadian patients driving down to see me all the time to pay me cash because they need to wait one YEAR to get a consult with a pain medicine subspecialist like myself, and 6 months to get a simple pain relieving injeciton. And that is in Vancouver, BC, the best part of Canadaland.

In general, the federal government should shrink instead of expand. It is a cesspool of non-accountability and inefficiency. They cannot even keep medicare alive... as you get older, you will see the Federal govermnent is a tumor. Its only goal is to expand, control and consume.
 
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Socialized medicine is a horrible thing, hence not a goal. We don't want a single payer system. The government needs to get out of the doctor patient relationship. Socialized medicine is a disaster. Socialism itself is a disaster.

I have Canadian patients driving down to see me all the time to pay me cash because they need to wait one YEAR to get a consult with a pain medicine subspecialist like myself, and 6 months to get a simple pain relieving injeciton. And that is in Vancouver, BC, the best part of Canadaland.

In general, the government should shrink instead of expand. It is a cesspool of non-accountability and inefficiency. They cannot even keep medicare alive... as you get older, you will see the Federal govermnent is a tumor. Its only goal is to expand and consume.
My only experience with socialized medicine has been as a military member where I could walk in, tell them what is wrong, schedule an appointment for the next day or be seen then, walk out and be done. If it works for active duty soldiers, why does it fall apart when applied to the general population?
 
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isn't medicare primarily restricted to those 65+?
Medicaid then? I don’t even know lol Whatever Washington State gave me and I pay nothing with no delays in care or anything of the like.
 
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Most law school graduates I know are working as cashiers at the moment...everyone's a lawyer these days and it's hard to get into a T10 law school that guarantees a job. Finance jobs are much quicker money but extremely dependent on the economy and therefore not as secure as med/dentistry/pharm etc. We were living in NY during '08 crash and jet flying wall street workers lost their homes left and right.

That being said, medicine often comes with years of residency, high liability, high stress, and often ****ty hours depending on specialties. The most bang for your buck is probably dentistry.
Isn’t it difficult to pay of dental loans though? They aren’t making as much as a PCP but they have the same amount of loans, right?
 
My only experience with socialized medicine has been as a military member where I could walk in, tell them what is wrong, schedule an appointment for the next day or be seen then, walk out and be done. If it works for active duty soldiers, why does it fall apart when applied to the general population?

Presumably the federal government needs you to get fixed and get back to work.

However, if you were in the VA, they'd treat you like crap and make you wait months for treatment. The VA system is a disaster as we all know. Many physicians have rotated through the VA in residency or worked for the VA and seen what a mess it is. Nobody can be fired or disciplined there, hence nobody does any work. Its very sad, as the vets deserve the best possible care.

Thank you for your service.
 
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100% yes. I've worked at both state and city run (NYC public hospital) institutions that have an insane amount of useless administrators and generally lazy people who are bad at their job but cannot be fired. I've also worked private hospitals that are run with pristine efficiency because they see through the bull**** and fire people who are dead weight. The state and city hospitals would not hold a candlelight to the amount of waste and useless baggage a single payer system would bring. The majority of private sectors run circles around the federal equivalents in efficiency and quality.

I don't expect an MS1 to understand these things but keep spouting information you clearly don't comprehend or have real world experience with.

I spent a long time working for a state government, and could not possibly disagree with you more. Government can be very inefficient, but the waste is minimal compared to the absolutely staggering overhead we have built into our health care system. The sheer quantity of effort and personnel we have to employ simply to negotiate between thousands of health care systems and thousands of insurance companies is mind-boggling.

There's a reason other developed countries are able to provide procedures and medications for a fraction of what we pay. Our system is fundamentally broken in truly profound ways. The billing-payer relationship in the US is one of the most dysfunctional fiduciary relationships on the planet.
 
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I don’t understand hence why I am engaging. I have preconceived notions that I would love to be corrected because it is generally better to be more informed than not.

Not even an MS1, applicant fresh off the presses. I am here to learn, not just to feel right!

So with the state and city hospitals, what is the reasoning behind so many administrative staff? Do the hospitals still have to deal with different insurance companies/regulatory requirements etc? What, in your opinion, would improve that system if anything?
Government beauracricy is a living thing and has survival instincts. It is rare to see a beauracricy get smaller. Remember the Peter Principle
 
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Government beauracricy is a living thing and has survival instincts. It is rare to see a beauracricy get smaller. Remember the Peter Principle
What makes government bureaucracy worse than the type of bureaucracy @jonnythan talks about:

I spent a long time working for a state government, and could not possibly disagree with you more. Government can be very inefficient, but the waste is minimal compared to the absolutely staggering overhead we have built into our health care system. The sheer quantity of effort and personnel we have to employ simply to negotiate between thousands of health care systems and thousands of insurance companies is mind-boggling.

There's a reason other developed countries are able to provide procedures and medications for a fraction of what we pay. Our system is fundamentally broken in truly profound ways. The billing-payer relationship in the US is one of the most dysfunctional fiduciary relationships on the planet.
 
Quintessence of the 2019 Left right here. Crap quality for more people = improvement
Which is better -

Option 1 (current system) 48% of Americans receiving prompt and proper care with little cost, 32% of Americans receiving some prompt care but mostly do not visit physicians for fear of needing to pay, and 20% of patients (predominantly low SES) receiving no care outside of the emergency room

Option 2 - everyone can call and schedule an appointment or get a referral and need not worry about cost at a slight detriment to time delay.
 
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One of the best and sure-fire ways to make a lot of money is to inherit it. We are currently experiencing the greatest wave of intergenerational wealth transfer in all of human history.

That or finding sugar daddies/mommies
 
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Historically, medicine has been a high income/high status profession with relatively high barriers to entry.

This couldn't be further from the truth. Before the mid-20th century, physician salaries were quite modest and the medical profession was generally considered a middle-class one. Prior to our age of widespread insurance coverage and standardized costs, patients were generally expected to pay whatever they could afford, so physicians couldn't expect to become wealthy unless they happened to serve an affluent community. Also, until the late 19th century, you could do an apprenticeship to become a physician, and there were no rigid academic entrance requirements. Early medical schools had lax standards and low start-up costs, so the financial barrier was low.

The high income and prestige that come with being a physician in America today are not matters of historical precedent. Rather, they stem from relatively recent changes in education/training standards, policy, technology, scientific knowledge, public needs, and the nature of the medical profession itself.
 
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Rather, they stem from relatively recent changes in education/training standards, policy, technology, scientific knowledge, public needs, and the nature of the medical profession itself.
And I think this is a product of what medicine has become in the last six/seven decades. The last 70 years have seen the introduction and spread of imaging, antibiotics, endocrine regulators, antivirals, massive vaccine campaigns, a better understanding of genetic disorders, heart problems, and just an overall better understanding of how the human body works along with how to fix it.

While the historical precedent may be middle-class, going to the doctor isn't as simple as it used to be unfortunately. It isn't just about broken bones, infections, and "making grandma comfortable while she dies." Physicians should be paid more now than they were just a few decades ago. They do more nowadays then they did in yesteryear, which requires more education and thus higher salaries to incentivize.

The alternative would be we go back to medicine like it was without all of this technology. That would certainly help stem rising populations and bring us back to pre-modern rates of different disorders (people died from their diseases before they could reach an age to pass on their genetics).
 
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Other high income/high status professions that have high barriers to entry are:

Private Equity (PE)

Investment Banking

I’m not at all suggesting that going into these fields guarantees this type of success but all three of my brothers-in-law have been grinding in NYC in finance and absolutely crushing it since they were 22. Caveat being they all had fathers in the industry who knew the process, what to do, and most importantly who to rub shoulders with. Very hard to break into high finance without being in the know. That being said my BILs are so astronomically ahead in their savings and investments that barring another huge recession I don’t see myself ever coming close to catching up even as a sub-specialist.

“If you want to make money study money”
 
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they all had fathers in the industry who knew the process
This to me is the stand-out sentence in your paragraph there. They are successful because they were predisposed to success. Not to downplay any of their own merit in the biz, but still.
 
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Which is better -

Option 1 (current system) 48% of Americans receiving prompt and proper care with little cost, 32% of Americans receiving some prompt care but mostly do not visit physicians for fear of needing to pay, and 20% of patients (predominantly low SES) receiving no care outside of the emergency room

Option 2 - everyone can call and schedule an appointment or get a referral and need not worry about cost at a slight detriment to time delay.

Option 1, by far.
 
Option 1, by far.
So you prefer wealthy individuals getting superb care and poor people receiving little/no care over everyone having equal access to (albeit slightly reduced) care?

Why?
 
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What jobs make more than doctors?
I would suggest that the median of medicine is unbeatable but the outliers in business (especially tech and finance) are much, much higher. So, a top performer in medicine will earn great money. But a true top performer in business will earn insane money. For example, I know people who work in enterprise sales for big software companies (Microsoft/Salesforce/Oracle/IBM etc) who pull in half a million every year and have broken seven figures several years. Of course, less consistent than medicine but the top quartile is pretty incredible.

Also, BigLaw lawyers with a ton of experience, MBB consulting partners, investment bankers, hedge fund/private equity/asset management, etc.

And of course, business owners.
what jobs make more than medicine? well lets take a look at them and compare them to medicine on a non-passion scale (money, QOL, etc). This gonna be long.

first thats a bad question, given medicine is so varied in income. The average Primary care doc prob makes around 250k+ depending on their success and depending on specialist, can be 350k-1m+

only real comp that are attainable by masses is high finance, high tech, and big law until you get into higher level managers at which point its hard to say a salary number

First finance. IB is the main path to make doc money. My friends are started at 80-90k base, 10-20k signing bonus, and probably up to 40kish so all in around 130-150k first year salary is normal. they also work 70-80 hours a week, much of which is boring as ****. As a resident you might work a lot but at least its often engaging and interesting. After 3-4 years, IB analysts are promoted to associates. Again, with base+bonus, these guys make 170-250k depending on performance. So they can almost match PCP salaries by age like 27ish. Finally promotions after this are largely performance based so 300k+ for VPs and 500k-1m+ for MDs (managing directors) is common but few make it to that point.

Better financial opp than medicine? probably. but IB is hard to break into, and medicine has far more job security, more interesting job, more prestige, while taking longer, probably paying less if you compare a good banker to majority of docs (ofc more docs making 300k+ than bankers simply bc there are more docs at that level)

Tech:

Okay here, my friends at google/amazon etc started around 110k or so but cost of living hits that hard. My most talented friends were able to secure 200k+ all in first year salaries though (including equity and bonus) but again, these are super rare. For the most part, tech will NOT get you more money than medicine as a direct comp but it is far shorter, easier job, and if you invest that money well you can effectively be making the same. Tech like engineering is largely dependent on management roles to get 250k+ salaries, and obviously most people don't get to that point but it is of course possible

FInally, law. Big law starts at 190k (up 10k from last year) almost nationwide. Within a couple years if you make senior associate and such level roles, 300kish is normal. Junior Partners i've heard anywhere from 400k to nearing 1 million depending on their book of business and the size of the firm. And obviously senior partners can be 1m-5m+, again depending on the size of the firm.

In essence, yes other professions can make more than docs, but only a small amount of people reach the point in the professions that get to that salary outside of finance, where most everyone makes associate and they can get 200k+ all in. However after some point (200k? 170k?) increases in salary are marginal improvements for QOL, esp if marrying a spouse with good income.

Being a doctor will never be a BAD financial investment because to be blunt even 300k in loans isn't the end of the world if your salary is 250k. But at the same time it often is NOT a good financial investment because of the said loans added to the time value of the degree+residency. It's why people always say, don't go into medicine for money but also don't not go in because you think you can make more somewhere else.

if you can get into med school, yes you may be smart enough to do something else. but you never know.
 
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Some people win the lottery at birth.
Hey, I consider myself lucky to be one of the 25% in the world who grew up with a washing machine, 44% who grew up with consistent access to toilet and personal hygiene, and 51% that grew up with consistent and cheap power/electricity. Everything beyond that is just details.
 
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Your point is a good one, albeit a bit pedantic.

Sorry, my intention wasn't to be pedantic. I just thought I'd address it because it's a common misconception, especially among pre-medical students.

While the historical precedent may be middle-class, going to the doctor isn't as simple as it used to be unfortunately. It isn't just about broken bones, infections, and "making grandma comfortable while she dies." Physicians should be paid more now than they were just a few decades ago. They do more nowadays then they did in yesteryear, which requires more education and thus higher salaries to incentivize.

The alternative would be we go back to medicine like it was without all of this technology. That would certainly help stem rising populations and bring us back to pre-modern rates of different disorders (people died from their diseases before they could reach an age to pass on their genetics).

Three points:

1. Salaries, like any other type of prices, are ultimately determined by laws of supply and demand. The higher barriers to entry and higher job difficulty that you describe certainly may serve as limits on supply, but we must also take into account the factors that influence demand; don't forget that we live in an age when people have unprecedentedly high access to many alternatives to physician care, whether that be mid-level care, alternative medicine, or even Dr. Google. We can't just intuit that people in a profession "should be paid more" simply because they're "doing more." We need to move past the ill-begotten notion that we can somehow calculate how much a person ought to be paid for his labor.

2. A decrease in physician salary could lead to an undersupply of medical care, but I wouldn't go as far as to say that we would "go back to medicine like it was without all of this technology." Most physicians today, when faced with the prospect of making, say, $50K/year less, wouldn't just give up on medicine and become re-trained in another field. Also, past technological progress wouldn't be erased altogether...

3. There are countries where physicians are only required to have bachelor's degrees and where they are paid much less than US physicians. According to major studies, some of these countries' patient outcomes are comparable, or even better, than our own. Just some food for thought.
 
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patient outcomes are comparable, or even better, than our own. Just some food for thought.
I can definitely see this playing out in regards to primary care/quality of life care etc. But do you know if these studies see the same patient outcomes for complex surgical cases, genetic disorders, IR type cases, cancers etc.? Genuine question. If so, then it seems to me the only value to 12 years of post-secondary education is for the name recognition globally of "OOOOOh he's a HARVARD doctor."
 
I can definitely see this playing out in regards to primary care/quality of life care etc. But do you know if these studies see the same patient outcomes for complex surgical cases, genetic disorders, IR type cases, cancers etc.? Genuine question. If so, then it seems to me the only value to 12 years of post-secondary education is for the name recognition globally of "OOOOOh he's a HARVARD doctor."

I'm not going to dig through articles right now, but I will say that the entry barriers for the medical profession are artificially raised in the US in order to increase the money-making potential for the individuals and institutions that stand to financially benefit from the monopoly.
 
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This to me is the stand-out sentence in your paragraph there. They are successful because they were predisposed to success. Not to downplay any of their own merit in the biz, but still.
IMO having doctor parents is a similar leg up on getting in to good undergrad / good med school / doing well in med school. Helps to have people in the know.

If someone has a knack for programming, that's definitely the closest thing to doing medicine minus the 8 years of additional debt/training/life sacrifice and with a commensurate decrease in salary floor.
 
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The AMA has been perhaps the most effective at this
I would argue that the dock and shipping yard worker's union has been the most effective. In a half century they were brought from equivalent of $5.00 and hour to upwards of $40.00. Not even physicians have seen that kind of boost.
 
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Giving access to everyone at the detriment of a few I think is good.
you havent seen bad practice at work. You would NEVER make a statement like that. NEVER. Spend time in a Veterans Hospital after 7pm and then come back to me and make that statement
 
you havent seen bad practice at work. You would NEVER make a statement like that. NEVER. Spend time in a Veterans Hospital after 7pm and then come back to me and make that statement
I have, extensively. VA hospitals are absolutely terrible. The health care providers are fantastic and want change to the system, but the bureaucracy keep patients from being seen and a number of other issues. The VA is not a good model to base all of ones ideas of socialized medicine on because it is just a bad model for health care in general.

Single payer system (as it works in my head)would not try to emulate what veterans have but rather what active duty has. The VA is a terrible system not because socialized medicine is a terrible system.

At least that is how it works in my head. How do you feel it would play out in reality? Again I ask, this style of system works well elsewhere outside of the United States. Is it just an inherent American thing that keeps it from being established here?
 
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Hey, I consider myself lucky to be one of the 25% in the world who grew up with a washing machine, 44% who grew up with consistent access to toilet and personal hygiene, and 51% that grew up with consistent and cheap power/electricity. Everything beyond that is just details.
yeah, when i was growing up, we did not have a washing machine, and had to wash everything by hand. Also, for several years economy was so bad, that we did not have hot water at all from april to october, and electricity was out every third day or so from october to april. So yeah... everything is a matter of perspective
 
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In certain parts of where I'm from, a CRN-A and or NP working at or being a partner of a PP makes more than a general pediatrician. So 4 years of MD + debt + 3 years of peds to make less than a nurse lol.
 
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