By Dr. Jim Dahle, WCI FounderI find it fascinating and a bit nonsensical to see so many articles out there arguing that US doctors are overpaid. Usually, this shows up in an article talking about how expensive healthcare is in the United States. A good example is an article from NPR a few years ago titled “Are Doctors Overpaid?”
“Some people view Match Week as a beautifully engineered dance between supply and demand that ensures the best and brightest learn how to be good doctors at top hospitals. Others, like Dean Baker, Senior Economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, say this residency system makes healthcare dramatically more expensive for Americans. A 2011 study in Health Affairs found American doctors, who make an average salary of almost $300,000, are paid around twice as much as doctors in other rich countries.
Baker says ‘doctors are seriously overpaid' and a big reason is rules that restrict the number of people who can get residencies. He calls these rules the work of ‘a cartel,' and in economics, those are fighting words. A cartel limits the supply of something in order to increase the amount of money they can charge.”
Want to get even more fired up? Try this one from the Daily Iowan in 2021 titled “The Curious Case of the Overpaid American Physician.” A few excerpts:
“The US does not have enough doctors, and the shortage is contributing to the high costs patients pay when they go to the hospital. Compared to other industrialized countries, the US ranks near the bottom in supply of doctors—only 2.6 doctors per 1,000 patients. In contrast, most major economies in the European Union, such as Germany and France, have nearly double the number of doctors we have per 1,000 patients . . . This is largely due to high barriers of entry such as an incredibly limited number of spots in medical school and regulations that protect physicians from competition in the form of nurse practitioners and immigrant doctors.
Along with the complicated workings of our private insurance system, the shortage of US doctors is the best elucidation to why they are overcompensated compared to their European counterparts. For example, doctors earn $138,000 in the UK compared to the $316,000 U.S. doctors make . . .
Even if the US were to establish a system in which Medicare were the sole insurer in the market, overall healthcare costs would still exceed those of fellow industrialized nations because of the high salaries to which US doctors are accustomed. In the mainstream debates surrounding our healthcare systems, the problem overlooked by both proponents of private and single-payer healthcare systems is the supply of doctors and their high salaries. These salaries end up contributing significantly to the financial costs patients face.
The rest of the union should follow the lead of states like Iowa and allow nurse practitioners to open up general practices to compete with doctors. These recommendations will make up for the shortage of doctors we have in the current system and drive down costs for patients in a future single-payer system.”
Why US Doctors Earn More
There's no doubt that US doctors do earn more, on average, than international doctors. There are actually a fair number of reasons for this. Let's go through them.
#1 Everybody Gets Paid More in the US
Newsflash! Tons of people want to come to the US because it's awesome and the jobs pay great. Look at average incomes in various countries in the world. Here are the top 25 countries in the world by GDP per capita (via Statistics Times).
Do you see any large countries above the US? No. The US comes in seventh. Seventh out of 195 countries and first among the big countries. Any comparison to the rest of the world of ANY profession is going to make the US look like those professionals are overpaid. Consider the countries to which the US is often compared:
- 10th: Australia
- 18th: Canada
- 20th: Germany
- 23rd: UK
- 34th: Japan
Nobody ever wants to compare us to doctors in Singapore or Qatar for some reason. And no, the US is NOT the country in which doctors are paid the most. It's Luxembourg.
Incidentally, the US ranks No. 9 for attorneys, No. 1 for pharmacists, No. 1 for tech workers, No. 3 for engineers, No. 5 for accountants, No. 4 for financial analysts, No. 5 for professors, No. 9 for teachers, and No. 2 for firefighters. Should I go on, or have I made my point? Quit picking on the doctors. Just about everybody gets paid more in the US. Or do you think we should pay teachers and firefighters less?
#2 It Costs More to Become a Doctor in the US
We've all met doctors who went to school in a foreign country, and none of them ever seem to have student loans. Yet we keep meeting US docs who owe $200,000, $300,000, $400,000 or more in student loans. Why is that, do you suppose? There are numerous free and nearly free medical schools all over Europe. Some top German universities are free. The most expensive one I could find was €6,000 a year. Russia, Bangladesh, Romania, and China are all about $3,000 a year. Korea ($6,000) and Singapore ($10,000) are expensive by comparison but a bargain when compared to the US. Most US students are paying $30,000-$80,000 a year in tuition alone, and they go to school for longer (the whole process is 1-2 years shorter in Europe). Guess what? When it costs more, it should pay more.
#3 Risk
Where else do doctors routinely get sued for hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars? Oh, nowhere it turns out. It is a little worse in China. You can go to jail for three years for malpractice. You can also go for seven years just for cheating on an exam there. For the most part, doctors in other countries rightly worry far less about lawsuits. If you want people to do something that is high risk, you need to pay them a lot to do it. I know lots of doctors who would be willing to be paid less if it also reduced their chances of a lawsuit.
#4 Fewer Doctors per Capita
There are fewer doctors in the US per capita than in many countries. See this chart from the Niskanen Center.
While critics say that is because doctors artificially keep the numbers low cartel-style, the truth is that it is a long, expensive process to train a doctor. The rate-limiting step is not medical schools—they have increased enrollment in recent years. It is residency training, and in the US, that is mostly paid for by the federal government. If taxpayers want to train more doctors, they certainly can. Most residencies would love to add a few spots. It's obviously not a profitable activity or hospitals would be starting residency programs and hiring residents left and right even without Medicare funding. Want cheaper doctors? Make more doctors. It seems silly to blame the doctors for this one, though.
#5 US Doctors Specialize More
US doctors specialize more. Look at that chart above. Compared to most countries, we have far more specialists than primary care doctors. In reality, we don't have a doctor shortage. We have a primary care doctor shortage. Want more primary care doctors? Pay primary care doctors more, not less, and you'll have them. People respond to incentives, and even medical students are people. At any rate, specialists get paid more than primary care doctors (for various reasons including more risk, hours, and length of training), so when you have more specialists, you should expect to see higher average incomes. I bet if we compared primary care doctor incomes across the world, you wouldn't see anywhere near the disparity people like to point out.
#6 We Live in Rural Areas
There are a lot more rural areas in the US than in other countries. Unlike most professions in the US, doctors get paid more when they live outside the large cities.
That makes them cost more on average. The US is 17% rural—which puts it at 40th on the list, well behind many other developed countries. The US is nearly tied with Canada, which is basically mostly wilderness. It has more area and 10% of the population.
#7 We Work More
Even our primary care doctors work more than those in most other countries.
Specialists also tend to work more on average. Vascular surgeons average almost 900 more hours a year than family practitioners, according to the JAMA Network.
Since we have a high percentage of specialists in the US, it stands to reason that we work more hours in the US. When you work more, you should get paid more. I guess it makes sense. Since there are fewer of us per capita and since Americans don't seem to be any more healthy than those in other countries, we have to work more to take care of all those people.
More information here:
Why American White Coat Investors Should Count Their Blessings
Financial Lessons from a Retired Economist and Current Medical Student
Why Cutting Doctor Incomes Doesn't Move the Needle
I think it's pretty clear why doctors get paid more in the US than in other countries, so I think we can quit using that as an argument to cut doctor pay or as an excuse for our healthcare spending problem. It's not like just cutting physician pay will somehow dramatically reduce the cost of healthcare anyway. Doctor salaries account for just 8% of the healthcare dollar. Let's say you cut all of their pay by 25%. US healthcare spending by capita is $12,000 now. If you cut doctor's pay by 25%, it would still be $11,760. You'd only save $240 per person per year.
It's like the argument I'm always hearing that the reason healthcare costs so much in the US is because of that darn ER. Well, emergency department spending accounts for 2%-3% of the healthcare dollar. Again, somehow magically cut that spending in half, and what do you save? One percent. The American College of Emergency Physicians estimates that about 10% of visits to the ED are unnecessary. I'd say that's about right. So, we're talking about cutting spending by 0.2%. We're talking about $24 per person in the US. It's not going to move the needle.
What will move the needle? Why don't we start with insurance companies. For every dollar they take in, they spend only 80 cents on healthcare. That means 20% of your healthcare dollar is going to insurance costs and profits. Of the remaining 80%, 22% goes to prescription drugs (I bet we could find some savings there), and 42% goes to hospitals for inpatient and outpatient services (I bet we could find some savings there, too). Just because doctors are the most visible part of the healthcare system doesn't mean that's where the money is going.
Consider a typical ER bill. You might pay $4,000 and only $400 of it goes to the doctor. Consider a surgery. The hospital might get $50,000 and the surgeon might only get 1% of that. It's not uncommon at all for the anesthesiologist to make more than the surgeon on a procedure. But even if you put them together, it's a tiny percentage. An appendectomy pays a surgeon only $623, for instance, and that's before any overhead, which is often 60-70%.
More information here:
Living Our Lives in a Dual-Physician Income Household
The Lifestyle of Doctors Worth About $50 Million and How They Made So Much Money
The Bottom Line
Doctors get paid more in the US because they should get paid more in the US. Any argument otherwise is disingenuous. Physician incomes are not even in the top five reasons for runaway healthcare costs in this country. Stop blaming the doctors.
What do you think? Why do you think doctors get paid more in the US than in most countries? Is that appropriate or not? How long would you practice medicine for if your income were cut in half? Would you have still gone to medical school if there had not been the promise of a high salary at the end?
Great piece! I’d also argue US has one of the most “western” of diets, which produces chronic disease on an industrialized scale. In my opinion, this would be a major driver of cost, far more than physician pay.
My favorite column here in a long time.
In both medicine and dentistry, where there is a margin or profit to be made, you can bet enterprising individuals will find away to insert themselves in the process. The insurance system is a great example. The more steps and people can be inserted into a process, be it dentistry or medicine, the more expensive it becomes. As a society, in a lot of healthcare situations, we’ve taken a simple scenario and made it wildly complex. It costs a lot to implement the latest and greatest in diagnostic and treatment procedures, those new toys and tools require training and maintenance (and marketing, big pharma) , and it takes a long time to determine if the new outcomes are any better than the old ones. In many cases they aren’t.
Nothing wrong to implement the latest and greatest “gadget” in the practice of medicine…the problem, or the waste is in the administrative aspects. Too many people have made into healthcare, making it “wildly complex” system, all because there are no other good jobs in the country (such as well-paid manufacturing jobs). everyone is getting a paycheck from healthcare because it’s essentially a subsidized welfare system so people can still “make a living”. It’s the reason US healthcare has been going up year after year as a percentage of GDP.
Kind of a wild extrapolation you made.
The real cost driver are insurance companies, by far.
These are for profit companies, and there are many of them, and they all have marketing and billing departments. They are required by law to increase their profits and shareholder value, so any way they can do that, they will. The number of manufacturing jobs that ever existed is likely grossly overestimated, and is a simplification by some for what ails economic success at lower income levels… which you are unlikely to have any actual experience with if you are commenting here.
One of my favorite articles, ever.
I memorized all the reasons why blaming the rich doctors is a vacuous stance based on class warfare and specious arguments.
Almost all of the contractors I hired to accomplish a kitchen remodel were charging rates similar to mine ($175 an hour with no benefits other than malpractice coverage).
Plumbing three sinks/faucets: $1200 plus parts. Time 4 hours. That’s $300 an hour.
Leveling the cabinet tops and putting in supports for the countertop: $1000 plus parts. Time 6 hours. $166 per hour.
Tiling the backsplash: $1800 with the grout and tile. About $1200 of this was labor. Time 5 hours. $240 per hour.
Back in 2016, I had some old trees removed. Cost $1200. Time 6 hours. $200/hour.
I priced out some landscaping, trimming, edging, and cleanup here and the fellow actually quoted me $6800. That’s two men for 4 days, 8 hours a day at $100 an hour each.
I did the work myself and payed myself $200 an hour into a vacation fund and went to Ireland instead of paying the bid.
I would like to point out that no humans were likely to die during the above examples. Of course all these contractors have overhead, but they are substantially paid my wages.
As the wife of a contractor I can tell you your analysis of the contractor take home pay is not what you think. They have tons of hidden costs that the home buyer doesn’t see. Just like people whining why does it costs so much for a half hour of a physicians time a contractor isn’t charging for just the time you see them work. You can hire cheap labor but usually they aren’t licensed or bonded which carries legal implications for the homeowner. The job also will be sloppy. Or yes you can do it yourself. Plumbers and electricians charge a lot because if they don’t do the job right your home can burn down or flood your home.
Of course, everyone has overhead. My overall point was just that they tend to make the same money I do, because I also have overhead… and if I don’t do the job right somebody dies.
I agree that it’s best to get someone who’s bonded and insured which costs more money, and I pay what they ask because I am unable to do the work that they do. They are also unable to do the work that I do.
The article was about physicians making too much money, but I don’t think a couple hundred an hour is too much money for a doctor or a skilled consultant or contractor. It might be a bit high for yardwork, however. 😊
Find me a plumber who earns over $500,000 working? Do you understand basic math, doc?
That’s what I don’t like about health-care. You guys are always defensive, you said it’s not too much to pay a couple hundred dollars a hour a Doctor or a SKILLED consultant or contractor.
The problem is exactly this, a Doctor, just for the sake of studying Medicine will earn a lot even if they are absolutely incapable of doing the job. Yes there are pay increases overtime, rightly so, but they are already well paid even at the early stages of the career.
So why not mentioning skilled for Doctors as well?
The system is designed to keep unskilled doctors from ever practicing at all and, believe it or not, actually does a pretty good job of that. It’s hard to hide complete incompetence for 3-5 years in residency.
Bullshit
Care to elaborate? Hard to have much of a discussion with responses like that.
Great article! I love seeing the breakdown of the costs behind the income. When you brought up the lower income for primary care doctors, it reminded me of articles and podcasts discussing a shortage of those doctors due to the strong incentives for specialization. Any thoughts on how bad this shortage is, or if there is a good solution?
I’m convinced there are no easy fixes. How bad it is depends on where you live I’m sure. As bad as the shortage is, the maldistribution is probably worse.
Great article. Do US doctors spend more on overhead (e.g. paperwork, emails, etc.) than other nations? That would be another cost driver.
Maybe, but the numbers I’m referring to are net of all that.
So the numbers are final? Even after taxes?
No, not after-tax.
Universal healthcare would improve this (physician access, not high doctor income). If no one had to worry about how to pay for medical care, more would get healthcare maintenance and there’d be more pay for primary care doctors. There would also be a lot less free care given by ERs and doctors of all types because patients end up never paying.
However I expect the US will continue to address this with expansion of mid levels in primary care. Perhaps as specialists are more and more overburdened with consultations whose result is this patient didn’t need me or this patient needs a different specialty people will recognize the value of higher trained primary Care providers. However I guess it hasn’t happened in the ER.
Where are you getting the data as far as what percent of the healthcare dollar goes where? I’d be curious to see if there’s any contention to how that dollar is allocation.
Does that source also show changes by year? I’d be curious to see how things changed over time.
If I didn’t link to it, I don’t have it at my fingertips. Like most of my articles published here, this was written months ago. But it’s probably not that hard to find with Google. I’m sure that’s how I found it originally. Here is a CDC page with similar statistics:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/hus/topics/health-care-expenditures.htm#:~:text=In%202019%2C%20hospital%20care%20spending,%25)%2C%20and%20home%20health%20care%20(
Awesome article, giving us docs some well thought out and timely discussion points as I have hearing a lot of buzz right now about healthcare cost. This Economist article might be a good supplement to the conversation for those who are looking for a deeper dive.
https://www.economist.com/business/2023/10/08/who-profits-most-from-americas-baffling-health-care-system?utm_medium=cpc.adword.pd&utm_source=google&ppccampaignID=17210591673&ppcadID=&utm_campaign=a.22brand_pmax&utm_content=conversion.direct-response.anonymous&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiApuCrBhAuEiwA8VJ6JrkMOvaX4euJFmFkOD4FxRLBw2hGMso5JSQg4NuUWh4DUOEMdfXf3xoCVbMQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds
Preach! Very well done!
Via email:
Awesome article, hope this one goes viral, will send it out as I feel this is such a great rebuttal.
Terrific post! Writing an article like this requires a significant time commitment for research… and it also requires significant skill to share the information in a comprehensive way.
Thank you for continuing to put in the effort
In a recent conversation with friends, we overheard someone talking about a well-known OBGYN in the area. “I’m pretty sure he must makes over $1 million a year!” A friend of hers looked at her hospital bill and simply multiplied one line item by how many births the doc said he does a year. My wife (the physician in the family) smiled and then used it as a teaching opportunity.
It does seem like there is a growing awareness about this issue and that there are so many other factors. Perhaps doctors are being more vocal about it in recent years. And in our experience, your doctor will fight for you, unlike someone from a hospital billing department’s phone tree purgatory.
What was the conclusion? How much would he make?
Playing to the crowd here!
Joking aside.. the general theme here is that global trends need to be accounted for first – America vs elsewhere on income, costs (education, living, liabilities/risk), taxation, social support etc. I’m not a medical professional yet I see the exact same comparisons are relevant for other industries such as my own.
After that is accounted for I suspect American doctors still have it quite good today and expect ongoing downwards pressure on that through various things such as healthcare tourism, delegation to cheaper employees, insurance and government pressure etc.
Most of all I don’t think doctors individually are the “problem”, but instead it’s system and global challenges that American doctors happen to win from.
Medicine is a hard and difficult job, but most physicians don’t reach the 1%. The job is the same at 55 as at 35 — still working night shifts and seeing patients (specialty dependent of course). There are few cush positions later in life unlike some other fields.
It is discouraging to read doctor bashing in the New York Times. I have read many articles over the years there about how evil doctors are. However people working in finance, making many multiples more than the average physician, get a pass.
For some reason there is a lot of hatred in the media of people who are there taking care of the reporter’s parents at 2 am on Saturday night. I’m not sure why there is so much resentment that physicians make enough to take their family to Disneyland or buy a luxury car.
Because people hate to pay for things that they “need.” They desire the things that they “need” to be free (or extremely cheap, or subsidized) so they can spend their money on things they “want.” To the extent that doctors provide care that people generally perceive as “needed” (instead of “wanted”), they will always receive some hate (and will see general support for a downward push in reimbursement for such care, at least until the quality ramifications become inescapably apparent).
There’s a lesson there for the medical students/residents/early career physicians still figuring out their career paths. It probably partly explains the pay disparities between specialties, and I imagine it may go even farther in explaining the intra-specialty disparities sometimes discussed here.
So true, GP! Comment of the year. The entitlement mindset is everywhere.
Great post by Dr. Dahle too.
More below.
Agreed. Medicaid copays are pitifully small, but I’ll see that same patient with a new iPhone and nice clothes…or one even better, living in a half million dollar house in a state where cost of living is exceptionally low.
What the patients have and own I think is nobody’s business
Given that Medicaid is for the poor, it seems like those who abuse the system (and thus take resources from the poor) should indeed be of concern. If you live in a half million dollar house, odds are that you are less likely to be poor and more likely to be gaming the system.
I think the main problem is that in most careers, as you mention, you start with very low salaries even if you have a college degree and then grow your salary as you get better and gain experience and so on, year over year, meanwhile in healthcare while your salary rightfully grows over years, it already starts very high even if you have not worked a single day yet
Spot on! As a physician in Germany I find your arguments very accurate. Especially your points on overall US wages and tuition are very true. Even though our salaries are less in Germany than in the US, I think they might well place us in a roughly equal percentage within our society. As a corollary, the price levels are also lower here.
Comment on med school in Germany: Indeed the best schools are the old ones, with longstanding traditions in education and research (some dating back to the 14th century). Those are public and essentially free (at least for domestic, first-time students). The few private ones you pay for are a young phenomenon and generally rank lower.
The working hours statistics you cited surprise me, however. Although I find myself in this bracket of people working >45h per week (certainly a 1%er in terms of hours worked), I wouldn’t have expected Germany to top the list. Don’t you Americans work the most crazy hours? At least that’s the cliché.
Anyway, congratulations from Germany and keep up releasing those sharp posts
Thanks for your kind words. Fun to hear all the way from Germany.
Yes, American doctors work long hours at least > 50 hours per week. During Residency training 60-80 hours per week and it is hard training same as medical school.
Great blogpost, Dr. D.
You could tell this was from a political hack the way it was written and of course omitted all of your points. Also, when the signature carries that pronoun nonsense, it removes all doubt.
By the way, an additional point is this, which is really what is missing (psst, they want to control labor costs, like always): There are some hospital systems in the US that have assets and incomes that are as large as entire countries’ GDP. If any journalist were honest (hard to find these days, and likely censored), of course they’d look where all the money goes, and where the majority of the lobbying is coming from. Of course, as all physicians know, that ain’t from doctors – sadly.
Where do those hospitals take all that money?
Administration costs are ballooning. Know a bright young lady who’s considering her college and professional future, and she related point blank that “Doctors work too hard for their money. Why do that when I can be an administrator instead and make close to the same?”
I had no good financial argument for her!
My home state in the Southeast passed a law to raise the number of medical school admissions from 137 to 150 back in the 1990s. The result? The number of failures on Step 1 of the USMLE increased by 10. It remains elevated to this day. And therein lies part of the problem. We don’t have enough college students who are both able and willing to survive the medical school curriculum.
Having served on an admissions committee, I’m a little skeptical. We always felt like we had 2-3X the numbers of very qualified applicants than we had room for. I wonder if something else changed such as requiring a minimum GPA/MCAT score and focusing on other aspects of the application rather than taking the highest scoring applicants.
Those article excerpts at the beginning…
I understand random internet trolls saying that kind of stuff, but how can you be a JOURNALIST and be so clearly uninformed about the stuff you publish? It’s appalling.
Pretty wild eh?
Excellent article!! To the point but elaborate with stats!! I totally agree with all the points noted!! Thanks!!
In my opinion, many doctors would give up being doctors if not for the income. Being a physician in the United States is quickly morphing from a respected independent enterprise where physicians can be pioneers in their fields and advance healthcare forward, to positions of efficiency, utilization, and production managed by networks.
The networks are being squeezed by the payors, and the reality of healthcare in the United States is that people just do not want to pay for it.
What they do not realize are countries with exceptional healthcare systems and social benefits also have exorbitant overall tax rates to pay for the programs.
Also, the same talented individuals who chose to undergo the rigor of medical schooling and training in the United States could have easily been successful and possibly even earned more in numerous other professions and business endeavors.
What continues to attract any talent to medicine is the high benefit (monetary) to risk ratio, with the continued underlying notion that the profession is a noble way to earn a living.
The problem in the end is no one, neither patients, the government, payors, or employers want to face the reality that you will get what you pay for.
The system we currently have, is the system we have all decided to pay for.
Cutting salaries will quickly devolve into less hours worked, less patient access, and more clinicians exiting the field to pursue business opportunities. It won’t hurt the physicians, they are smart enough to go work somewhere or do something where they are valued. It will defeat the system.
Costs will skyrocket with PA/CRNP autonomy because of a lack of training resulting in increased testing, more office visits, mis-diagnosis, and patients going undiagnosed.
Your points all make sense, with the exception that insurance companies should spend more than 80% of revenues on claims. Like all businesses, including hospitals, they have operating expenses; these average 15%+ of revenues. This leaves 5% or less in profits; average profit margins for U.S. corporations are 6%-10%, putting health insurance company profits on the low end. Private health insurance companies are not the cause of high health care costs.
You don’t think 20% of the health care dollar (using your statistics) is contributing to high health care costs?
The important thing to note here is that converting from a private third party payee system to a nonprofit third party system will only save 5% max. If the nonprofit is less efficient it could end up costing more. The real savings would be in eliminating third party payers completely, with up front savings of 20% and further savings as patients become more cost conscious.
Excellent point.
The real way to save on health care is to, well, have less health care. Doing less of the stuff that doesn’t matter at all or that doesn’t make much of a difference. And patients and doctors don’t like to hear that.
So, if Doctors are just a small %, Insurances also are a small part, what does drive the cost of healthcare so high?
I get it that the Machinery hospitals needs are often designed and built by a few corporation that will ask whatever money as they control the market, so this probably drives the cost high, but other than this, what else? Why a simple Ambulance ride costs so much?
I’m genuinely asking as I’ve not got a clue…
Anyway, as budgeting is about cutting costs and sometimes one could say “what difference can $10 a month make” and then start subscribing to many platforms and without noticing that $10 is $150… so Doctors wages and Insurances aren’t the main reason but I guess there isn’t a main reason altogether, just lots of mismanagement and probably a small % getting wealthier and wealthier, not even talking of $300k a year but weekly
A lot of the health care dollar goes to insurance companies, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and frankly just a ton of administrative costs. I think 10% goes to docs (and they still have overhead). So even if you cut physician payments by 50% you’d only drop health care costs by 5%. Even doctor salaries went to zero it isn’t going to save you much money on your health care.
Thanks to fast food restaurants, `administrators’ and insurance companies for driving healthcare costs up. And yes stop blaming the doctors!!
Your article did not tackle the actual issue from an economic standpoint. You completely glossed over the arguments for why doctors are overpaid. However, the reasons are simple.
1.) There is an artificial scarcity of doctors. The AMA has long lobbied to reduce the supply of doctors. For example, the AAMC released date showing that over 24,000 medical school applicants who scored a 514 and higher on the MCAT were rejected since 2021. With a high demand and low supply: doctors get paid more.
2.) Government regulations make doctors legal drug dealers. Doctors even played a key role in starting the opioid crisis.
The result of an artificial scarcity and government regulations is that physicians earn more money.
The artificial scarcity argument is an interesting one. The alternative of courfse is to eliminate licensing, medical boards etc. Seems like it would create more problems than it would solve.
Your “drug dealer” argument is stupid. Sorry. Doctors aren’t “cashing in” on controlled substance prescriptions. There’s not enough of that to move the needle for the vast, vast majority of doctors. The only big prescribers these days are the APCS in pain clinics and a few PCPs. And even then, it’s not like the docs are selling the drugs. Everybody played a role in the opioid crisis: patients, family members, doctors, hospitals, medical schools, pharma companies etc.
I do not think that his drug dealer argument was conceptually “stupid.”
Everyone will get sick at some point. Today, only doctors (and mid-levels practicing under them) can prescribe medication. Therefore, patients go to doctors in many cases just for a prescription, even if they do not need it. Regardless of whether the prescribing doctor earned money directly from the pharmaceutical company, they were paid to deal the drug. The consultation made them money.
You also ignored all the fancy steak dinners with reps….
Trash article that does not consider that times have changed. Primary doctor jobs can completely be replaced by chatgpt or google now. You know your own body way more than any doctor, you should be able to use chatgpt or a simple google search and diagnose your own symptoms. Eliminate the need for primary doctors completely. Primary doctors these days are completely useless anyway, and they don’t do anything outside of making small talk and attempting to butter the patient up. Clearly doctors do not need any more than maybe a couple days of education for this, so there is no need for all that expensive training, education, and residency that this article mentions.
Trash comment that does not consider that there is far more to practicing primary care than Google or even AI can currently do. I love that you think primary doctors are primarily in the diagnosis business. What percentage of patients coming to them do you think are there for an undiagnosed problem? Less than half I’d bet.
Look, if you don’t think a primary doctor can provide you any value, don’t go see one. It’s your life and health.