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Comment by siculars | Hacker News Reader

I'll borrow from a separate reply. When you dedicate 14 years of your life and are hundreds of thousands in the hole when you're finally able to earn feel free to talk about how you get paid too much.

What I know is that when I'm sick and/or injured I want a well paid doctor who has spent 14 years in training taking care of me.

The reason your ambulance ride was 4k is because anybody who is even remotely able to pay subsidizes everyone who doesn't. Healthcare is systematically broken in this regard, here in the US because there is no universal coverage. Not because there are neighborhoods where doctors live.

Your gripe is with the ever increasing administrative burden on doctors and the burgeoning bureaucracy. Doctors and other healthcare professionals are worth every penny.

Actually, what's sickening is ingrates like you who begrudge experts their due.

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Agreed the main issue is with the system being broken, but the professionals are a part and driving factor of that issue and also deserve at least some of the blame.

Many careers cost a great deal of time and money to get into (the cost of schooling is a huge issue, but a totally different discussion). Most of those careers make no where near the same sorts of salaries as MDs expect to make. The sciences in general have all of the same issues you mention. Doctors make obscene salaries in our current society (though not necessarily historically). It is disingenuous to say that doctors "deserve" these sorts of salaries. Doctors in other countries do not make the same sort of inflated salaries as US Docs. [0]

Again, while I agree that the system in general is broken, it is not sickening to point out that doctor's make obscene salaries.

[0] http://wallstreetpit.com/5769-the-medical-cartel-why-are-md-...

> The reason your ambulance ride was 4k is because

Also, ambulances are expensive vehicles crammed full of expensive technology and two expensive well trained staff.

When you're lying on the asphalt in a pool of blood you don't want any old flatbed with a couple of burly blokes turning up. Sure, they can heave you onto the back of the van and get you to ER quickly, but will you still be alive when you get there?

(Having said that, $4k seems expensive. Average UK ambulance cost is a couple of hundred pounds)

Nobody cares how hard doctors think they work.

Goods are priced based on their value to the consumer, not based on their cost to the manufacturer.

I don't know how health care is priced, but the idea I should internalize sympathy for the education burden on a doctor into the cost of my bill is asinine.

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