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Comment by snarf21 | Hacker News Reader

There is no need to market to Doctors now when they market directly to consumers who go demand they get the new medicine.

If we want to reduce costs, we need to move to lower level providers like a LPN or CRNP. Most people coming into a GP have the flu or an ear infection or .... and that can be handled by them. There will be one MD and to handle complicated cases and to supervise. We've already switched so that intake is done by CNA making $15/hour. In the US at least working at FAANG pays far more than being a GP.

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> In the US at least working at FAANG pays far more than being a GP.

Not just FAANG, either.

The assertion by grandparent poster that GPs are "astoundingly" well paid is bonkers.

"Astoundingly" is vague.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the mean salary of "family and general practitioners" in May 2020 was $214,370 [1]. This figure includes salaries from GPs throughout the country (i.e., not just in the Bay Area).

You can also look at median salaries. According to the BLS, all ten of the occupations with the highest median incomes in the U.S. are medical occupations [2]. "Family medicine physicians" are 10th on this list.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/physicians-and-surgeons.h...

[2] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/highest-paying.htm

Additionally, a GP has med school plus residency. A Stanford CS grad will start higher than most GPs with only a bachelors degree.

Mediocre GP makes 200k cash in Omaha or any average city and has choice among many employers and systems. Stanford CS represents top talent and moreover does not make 200k cash in Omaha, and can only make the big bucks at a fixed number of entities in fixed locations with fixed hierarchies and systems.

A freelance GP (waarnemend huisarts) in the Netherlands makes on average 65 euros per hour... It pays better to be a freelance software engineer. Less education required, less responsibilities, impact of mistakes is also usually less.

USA has an extremely inefficient system of training for doctors which wastes literally years of human potential. First you go to university from 18-22 but not even 2/3rds of the year. The rest of the year is some level of waste for most students. You often purposefully dumb down and study less rigorous subjects than an engineer because you need all top grades to be get into medical school and can't risk it. Then medical school is an excessively long four years which has further periods of time waste and a lack of integral training until late in the process. Then there is a highly unfocused three year residency with what are widely understood as illegal discriminatory labor requirements holding on to their anachronistic 1910 white-male origins by a proverbial thread. So at age 29 you can finally be a GP after many unnecessary years of wasteful, repetitive, unfocused study, vacations and debt. This exclusivity and opportunity hoarding results in a reasonably high skill at a very very unnecessary level of cost and personnel shortages.

Dutch system is quite similar: 3 years bachelor, 3 years masters, including 18 months coschappen (residency), and then 3 years of specialization to GP (other specializations take longer). (https://universitaire.bachelors.nl/faq/ik-wil-dokter-worden/)

Many specializations come with very low job opportunities, being a GP is very stressfull: low paid assembly line type of work, a GP is expected to see 6 patient per hour, do home visits, follow up with patients and hospitals, and run a practice, manage employees, follow lots of trainings, etc. Having your own practice as a GP is not very popular any more, a lot of GP just want to freelance part time, not having the additional stress of running a practice.

Reimbursement for GP services in the USA runs $150-$300/hour depending on whether you are seeing elderly patients or people on employment plans, and a doctor will see about half that, plus or minus depending on the setup. Hence $200k per year if a doctor sees about 6 or 7 hours of patients plus a few hours of paperwork, calls, and emails 5 days a week.

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