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Comment by core-questions | Hacker News Reader

Oh, no, won't someone think of the poor doctors and their salaries!

Hardest working, highly skilled and intelligent, absolutely essential to society -- we should pay doctors a wonderful premium for them sacrificing a decade of their lives to get the education that lets them confidently save lives all day long.

And we do pay them very very.... very well.

Doctors are the highest paid job in every state: https://www.businessinsider.com/highest-paying-job-in-every-...

Doctors earn a median salary of 313k (its around 100k for software engineers): https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/911668

Our doctors earn about 3x as much as other first world countries.

Most of the time when I interact with a doctor, they're just entering in information into a database.

Maybe we could bust this guild of ridiculous standards to maybe squeeze in a few others? I don't get why we gotta firstly work our doctors to death, and secondly ensure they are "the best." Seriously, sometimes "good enough" is just that. Just don't let junior doctors make critical decisions for people until theyve got a few years and show skill. I don't know, kinda like every other job. I'm not saying like let any schmuck do it, but any I crazy or is it not obsessive how high the barrier to entry is? That's bs purported by lobbiests and guilds of doctors trying to keep people out to keep their demand and wages high. It's the inverse of how a union (whereas this is a guild of skilled laborers not paying dues) abuse this.

It's not just about the labor, it's also about the liability and risk mitigation. Most diagnosis and treatment decisions are made by the doctor because they typically face the consequences if they are wrong.

You can blame US law for that. Why not treat them like a prosecutor once they've reached a certain expertise or status? It keeps them from any absurd liability because it's guarded by the state. I'd like to ask why doctor is going to intentionally put someones life at risk cause they're lazy? Sure you'll find some in government work, but if it's government, they'll easily have oversight.

They can also blame themselves. My partner was a healthcare worker (medical surgical) named in several lawsuits because someone on their floor fucked up and now some person is suffering. It's expensive to care for someone whose been disabled due to malpractice, so suing for even nominal damages is going to be expensive.

People make mistakes and sometimes they are deadly. This doesn't just happen to "lazy" doctors. If someone could die every time you introduced a bug, you still couldn't write bug free code.

and that data entry is the number 1 source of burnout for medical professionals. (https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-physician-rel...)

There are services now which allow the doctor to film their interaction with a payment and then a lower paid person transcribe and do data entry. It's remarkable that we've come to that.

On the other side, PAs and NPs are taking on an ever increasing amount of healthcare responsibilities and are rapidly growing professions that barely existed a few years ago. (https://www.aanp.org/news-feed/nurse-practitioner-role-conti...)

This is what happens when the government regulates hospitals just like they do banks. At this point they might as well single payer the whole thing. It save everybody loads of time and energy. Not to mention the abhorrently massive data entry.

You need documentation for the insurance company to pay for visits/procedures.

Isn't a good chunk of that salary typically eaten by professional liability insurance?

From just a random source: "The average cost of Medical Malpractice Insurance is $7,500 annually. However, there many types of doctors and countless insurance variables. Keep this in mind when searching for coverage. Surgeons pay between $30,000 and $50,000 a year." https://howmuch.net/costs/medical-malpractice-insurance

So for most doctors its about 2% of pre-tax salary

Thanks for this data point, I stand corrected!

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