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Comment by msrenee | Hacker News Reader

I would look up the ladder before blaming physicians. It's not the high salary of the doctor that's inflated the cost of medical care. It's insurance, middlemen, overpaid administrators, and the general move to for-profit medicine that's to blame in my experience. Doctors make good money, but they also go through 8 years of expensive schooling to get there and are often just making ends meet for years after school.

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Not in the industry, and these are complex issues, but the AMA is made up of doctors and is also a huge part of how medical professionals are qualified and has heavy influence on how funding for training, etc. is allocated. So while an individual physician may not be 'the problem', blaming the AMA (and so 'physicians') shouldn't be dismissed outright in favor of the other groups you mention, which are also part of the problem

The AMA certainly has physicians as members, but I would call it a stretch to say they represent the interests of a majority of physicians.

Plus, the AMA/AOA has been lobbying for more residency spots for a while now, which would increase supply for physicians. These are generally things that could bring down costs.

Everything's part of the problem. It's why it's so hard to find "the thing" that causes high US healthcare costs. Every single part of it is more expensive than it should be, including doctors, and it all adds up to a system that's way more expensive than it should be, without any single entity or group being responsible for most of the problem.

I guess I feel like someone who did 8 years of school and I believe 4 years of residency which altogether generally costs them over $100k should be compensated for those expenditures of time and money. I don't feel that an aspirin should cost $5 just because you're laying in a hospital bed.

Maybe it's the opacity surrounding billing. What exactly costs $7k when you are hospitalized for 3 days? Hell, let's skip the ER and the procedures and go with a mental health inpatient stay. There's 72 hours of oversight by the staff. If they're making $20/hour, which isn't off-base to my knowledge and may be generous as they generally aren't BSNs, that's $1440 in wages. Food for 3 days and maybe an hour, hour and a half of the doctor's time over the course of 3 days, and medication. Those additional things don't add up to the remaining $5,560. Even with the cost of the building, electricity, janitors, it doesn't add up. So why does it cost so much for a 3 day stay without an emergency medical procedure?

We stayed 1 day at a hospital and was billed 8k.

Also Physicians make 200-600k/yr, that pays for the school in a year.

I'm sure there are specialists who make $600k a year. At least around here, primary care docs make around $200k max. Even if they're making $600k, that doesn't even begin to explain why hospital costs are so high. Some napkin math says $600k/year, 52 weeks/year, 40 hours/week is about $288.46 per hour. If you spent 10 hours that day with a very highly compensated doctor, that's less than $3k. So where does the other 5k of that bill come from?

Where did you see that years of education "should" or in general "do" lead to higher salaries lol ?

Why shouldn't they? I never said they statistically do lead to higher salaries, just that it's reasonable to compensate someone who has put that much money and time in should be compensated for it and I don't begrudge the physicians their pay.

Salary is market value.

If you spend time studying something useless or not making money you wont get money. Its as simple as that.

So a medical degree is useless? The market value for a doctor is less than what they're making? I seriously don't understand what you're trying to say here.

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