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Comment by jugg1es | Hacker News Reader

I've worked in the healthcare space for a decade and I have asked some tough questions of my leadership and I got a response I'll never forget: "Everyone in healthcare is a little bit evil"

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That's a an honestly upsetting statement. My wife is a pediatric critical care physician and there is not an evil bone in her body. She works her tail off, is (in my opinion) underpaid (like most pediatricians), and her job takes huge emotional toll. The same is true for all of her partners. Maybe I'm reading this wrong and you mean administrative or insurance or something else. But at least in my orbit, that statement is not true.

Is she really underpaid? The average pediatric critical care physician in the US makes $262K-$440K a year according to Glassdoor.

This is twice what the same role pays in most European countries. Unless she is well below that range for some reason, she is likely overpaid.

Everybody in healthcare, from the nurses to the hospital CEOs, makes far far more in the US than they would in a country with socialized medicine.

That was really not meant to be the focus of my comment, but that range definitely seems high, from all those that I know in the field. You have to also factor in the significant amount of debt they incur over the 14 years it takes to get through undergrad, medical school, residency training and then subspecialty fellowship training. Adult ICU doctors make twice as much as pediatric ICU doctors, that was really the thought behind the comment on being underpaid. That, and she works difficult hours (long shifts, nights, weekends, holidays, on-call, etc.) and the emotional toll of the work can't be understated.

The statement was in reference to the players in the US healthcare system: payers, ACOs, MCOs, providers, suppliers, SNFs, third parties, etc... It was not in reference to individuals. Most individuals in the healthcare system are decidedly not evil.

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