good point. You know what I think is an industry that completely protects it's high rates... Real estate agents. 3 freakin %. C'mon is it really worth that much?
One part of the problem is the high tuition fees medical students have to pay. I know several physicians who finished medical school with 200k debt, not uncommon at all, especially if you don't have wealthy parents. Should doctors salaries continue to decline, the US will have to look abroad for doctors, as is already the case in the natural sciences. Just look at the faculty of biochemistry, biology or physics departments of universities across the country, you will rarely see a Caucasian US born PhD student...they're all from China and India. Education in the US has become unaffordable.
i completely disagree with what you are saying here as far as how it concerns medicine. in general your principals are correct- you just clearly have no understanding of the truth about the current state of medicine. going to private practice is the equivalent of saying- i'm only going to provide my services to someone who can pay me for my work when i'm done. no matter how socialized medicine gets, the best doctors will always go to the highest bidder in the form of private practice, because only a handful of insurances pay doctors enough that they can profit. if you think doctors get paid to much- you should do a little research on how much they pay out in the form of student loans / malpractice insurance premiums compared to the what they receive for procedures. i would have gone to medical school if i thought doctors made enough money still. the honest truth is that they don't. if you go to school until you are 35 to get fully accredited you should make substantially more than anyone who started working at half your age. big business has already begun to crowd into medicine and dramatically reduce wages.
My GF is a doctor and you are somewhat mistaken. Only certain specialities jump into big money, you know, like plastic surgeons. But then you have a build a clientele. Your average physician who has to go work 90 hour weeks at the hospital does not even touch six figures. Some of these guys make less than the nurses. Once they put in their dues, they get into the 200k-300k range. There is an oversupply of doctors actually, not a lack of them. It does not really matter, because most of them will never get you better, only worse. The medical establishment has been hijacked a long time ago. If you try to go against the grain of pharma drug solutions, vaccines & surgeries, you get outcast.
and a lot of doctors hope to *only* be 200k in debt. that hints that they got a scholarship to undergrad. tack on another 200k if they went to a private undergrad.
glad to see some understanding of the medical field here. all this "doctor's get paid to much" fallacy being floated here was getting me frustrated
Again, its the same thing. Limited enrollment = higher tuition charged. If a million applicants apply, and Med Schools only place for 200,000 students, that means Med Schools can charge 5 TIMES Market value. If Med Schools were "De-regulated", tuition would come down as competing schools (and therefore available placements) go up. Its simple. Although I don't know, I'm sure the same is true for Post-Secondary. Academics probably have some type of strangle hold on accreditation for new Colleges, etc etc. Its about creating artificial scarcity to prop income. Nothing more.
No, you are wrong. It's not about the money. It's about being able to establish more power & control over them. The more competitive it is, the more obedient the students will be. The students will listen more to the professors, to the schools and the propaganda.
I've got a couple friends who are Doctors, too. One's in FL making 100K+ straight outta med school. The other is a soon-to-graduate neurosurgeon. Expects to rake in the dough. Not sure how there's a glut in MD's if established GP's can pull 200K+ . Thats a fair bit. I guess the hard part is establishing a clientel, building a name, starting a practise. Most private practises run similar to a franchise model. X% goes to the House where the House "Name" brings in the patients. Anyway, I'm just saying let the Free Market dominate. If Med Schools proliferated, wanna-be Docs wouldn't care so much about salaries because tuition wouldn't be 60K a year. Agree 110% about Conventional Orthodoxy in Med Industry, btw.
ask your friends who seem to be rolling in dough what they are paying in malpractice insurance. i bet it at least 1/4 of what they make if they are lucky. then let's talk about paying back loans. then let's talk about the missed opportunity cost of not earning a dollar til you are 30+ years old. then do an hourly wage comparison and tell me how awesome it is.