People just have no idea what goes into training a physician. Even after 2 full years of studying medicine I feel like I don't know anything, the field is that huge. I assume some of the bad takes are due to most people on this site being young and only ever interfacing with the healthcare system whenever they get strep throat. Sure someone can Google that you need to treat strep throat with antibiotics (maybe they'll even pick the right one!), but make sure to warn them about post strep glomerulonephritis. Oh what's that, and why do I need to warn them about that and not rheumatic fever...
Side note: I hope your second year is going well. I know they've had a lot of changes for USMLE because of coronavirus. Stay safe, and feel free to reach out if you ever have questions about med school or just want to chat. :)
You’d have to dangle a pretty big carrot to get me to do that. Otherwise, change the system so that you don’t have to sacrifice the best decade of your life and more.
Here is a chart for Australia: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/heres-how-much-money-aust... Hard to say how much they earn when working private as well. Anecdotes from the medicine subreddit suggest a lot.
Canada: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/06/canadian-doctor-protest-thei...
Medscape always sets the bar low when comparing US to other countries. I don't know why they do not include these ones. Here's the Medscape report that conveniently leaves these three countries off (wonder why): https://www.medscape.com/slideshow/2019-international-compen...
I'll try to find more sources for the other countries as I am interested as well.
220k is likely on the low side for PCP here. Offers coming in more around $250-270 range.
Do we? Please educate me then. I have a few guesses, the primary ones being artificially limited numbers of doctors, the artificially inflated cost of a medical degree, and the elite status that doctors hold.
A runner up guess is that Americans have the delusion that modern medicine has a near perfect solution for every problem, so doctors do not factor in cost when prescribing treatment, even when extreme costs are associated with marginally better outcomes. The funny thing about this is that because of the extremely high cost of modern medicine in practice, prescribing treatments that have the best health outcomes at the present can cause years, decades, or lifetimes of poor health and hardship due to the burdens of debt and stress. If I had to pay $10 grand for some stitches that I could do myself (which is a fairly common amount for say, 30 stitches), that cost would decrease both my life expectancy and my personal happiness.
You could suggest we replace the high paid physicians with nurse practitioners or physician assistants but that is ignoring the fact that they are paid in the exact same way (and soon to be amount - executive order signed to equalize Medicare payments b/w midlevels and physicians) as physicians! If an NP or PA sees 25 patients in a day, they will bill for the exact same amount as a physician would. Additionally, the midlevels would order more tests and imaging on average than physicians, driving healthcare costs ever higher. There's a reason hospitals love midlevels so much and are helping to push for their independent practice. Each unnecessary test or CT scan is extra $$$ to the hospital.
And someone with the intelligence and drive to become a doctor in the US can easily earn $100k per year for 40 hours per week in their 20s if not more, so the lost income alone is a minimum $500k, on top of hundreds of thousands in debt.
It all doesn’t make sense unless you come out making $200+ per hour.
There is no reason they need to be run through that gauntlet, other than to restrict supply and make them go through a hazing of sorts. Why can't they have work life balance? Why do they need so many years of schooling when other countries don't? Why are they paid minimum wage (if calculated per hour) during their residency years?
Other countries show that none of this is necessary to heal people who are sick.
That's insane. You can google symptoms, but you can't google context. Doctors are paid to interpret not to regurgitate. As an example, let's talk airline pilots as an example, Air France Flight 447, the crash of an A330 over the Atlantic. The computers were giving incorrect airspeed readings because of frozen pitot tubes. The pilots, reacting based on the computers, ended up stalling the airplane. The computer gave erroneous information, the pilots (trained to fly the "Airbus way" -- i.e. the airplane knows more than you do,) reacted exactly as the computers told them to react.
The "doctoring by computer" concept, while can be beneficial, can't replace the judgement of a human, just like highly automated flight decks, can't replace the skill of experienced pilots.
Google also is a search engine. It only surfaces results that "rank" -- not necessarily results that are correct. And certainly not results that are necessarily correct for the specific combination of circumstances.