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It isn't unfair in any way to point to the American healthcare system as a massive protectionist racket. Doctors, insurance companies, pharma companies, and hos

by debacle 11y ago

It isn't unfair in any way to point to the American healthcare system as a massive protectionist racket. Doctors, insurance companies, pharma companies, and hospitals are all hard at work ensuring their profits at the expense of patients and the American tax payer. The AMA is a highly self-interested organization.

crdoconnor 11y ago
>The AMA is a highly self-interested organization. The decline and extinction of self interested organisations that represent labor is pretty much the only reason why all wealth as accumulated with the 0.01%. AMA is, like most other unions, apparently not doing a very good job of keeping doctors' incomes up. That apparently doesn't stop self interested economists going on an academia-themed anti-union rant.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  That apparently doesn't stop self interested economists going on an academia-themed anti-union rant. Your promotion of this odd conspiracy about bourgeoisie capitalist economists being bought out by think tanks and promoting anti-labor, pro-capitalist propaganda is just completely baffling to me. You did the same in a previous thread about minimum wages and here again you insinuated in a different post about how Dean Baker's motivation for this paper (being an ACA supporter) must be conspiring to drive down wages of the medical profession to make ACA cheaper. I just don't know how one can respond to you.
  - crdoconnor 11y ago
    >Your promotion of this odd conspiracy about bourgeoisie capitalist economists being bought out by think tanks This economist literally works for a think tank and his paper is published on that think tank's website. For it to be an actual conspiracy that he is bought out I think it would have to actually be hidden from view somehow. I can only speculate as to his motivations behind attacking doctors in this paper, but there isn't a shadow of a doubt that he is attacking them. You literally can't blame doctors' wages on the rise of income inequality if they've been falling. If the paper actually said that they were rising I could have understood but it doesn't. Dean Baker is just doing a rather pathetic exercise in misdirection by talking about wages in other countries and how doctor's wages haven't necessarily been falling as fast as everybody else's. >I just don't know how one can respond to you. Believe me, the feeling's mutual. Apparently some people are impressed by the thin veneer of academic pseudo-legitimacy that comes from putting a couple of equations in a PDF and turn off the critical thinking section in their skulls.
    - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
      "Falling" is of little analytical meaning without a relative benchmark. You weren't displaying critical thought, you were engaging in a trite dismissal and then extrapolating an outlandish motive.
      - crdoconnor 11y ago
        >You weren't displaying critical thought, you were engaging in a trite dismissal I read the paper and researched its claims before attacking it. Did you do that before accusing me of trite dismissal?
mirimir 11y ago
All economic players are in theory subject to antitrust law. Anticompetitive behavior is in theory illegal. Union supporters negotiated an exception back in the day. So did the AMA, in part because it pretends to be a professional society. But in fact, the AMA has engaged in profoundly anticompetitive behavior from the start. For example, it regulates the physician supply by influencing policies of medical schools. It was modern pharmaceuticals that professionalized doctors and hospitals. Previously, symptomatic mitigation and surgery were about the only options. Doctors were not high-status professionals, barely above blacksmiths. National healthcare was the sane response to this clusterfuck. But not in the US, because that would be socialism. So it goes.
- chimeracoder 11y ago
  > For example, the AMA regulates the physician supply by influencing policies of medical schools. This is a common misconception that keeps popping up again and again. Reposting a comment from just four days ago: The AMA is a common scapegoat, except that the AMA has literally nothing to do with the number of of doctors supply-side. You're probably thinking of the AAMC, which has nothing to do with the AMA, and is responsible for the number of medical students who graduate each year from the US. Except the AAMC has very deliberately and openly increased the number of medical student slots each year for over a decade, specifically with this goal in mind. But even this is a moot point, because the number of people gradating with MDs is not the bottleneck - the problem is that doctors can't practice medicine until they complete a residency program. We graduate more medical students every year than we have residency slots available, so increasing the number of graduates even further will have no effect. Increasing the number of residency slots is up to Medicare, because Medicare funds residency programs nationwide, as residency programs do not make enough money to sustain themselves otherwise.
  - mirimir 11y ago
    Maybe that's so now. But my comment addressed policy over several decades. And the AMA definitely played a role. Virtually all medical school faculty and administration are AMA members. It hasn't necessarily been a formal process, just an old-boys (literally, for decades) network.
busterarm 11y ago
It used to be that you didn't need any specialized degrees to make medical prosthetics, just training and a place willing to employ you, until there was suddenly a flood of interest into a well paying field. Then it rapidly self-organized and now basically requires a Masters to have employment consideration. And yes, the underlying technologies and skills required have gotten _a lot_ more advanced recently, but this all started happening before that.

by debacle 11y ago

crdoconnor 11y ago

>The AMA is a highly self-interested organization. The decline and extinction of self interested organisations that represent labor is pretty much the only reason why all wealth as accumulated with the 0.01%. AMA is, like most other unions, apparently not doing a very good job of keeping doctors' incomes up. That apparently doesn't stop self interested economists going on an academia-themed anti-union rant.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago
That apparently doesn't stop self interested economists going on an academia-themed anti-union rant. Your promotion of this odd conspiracy about bourgeoisie capitalist economists being bought out by think tanks and promoting anti-labor, pro-capitalist propaganda is just completely baffling to me. You did the same in a previous thread about minimum wages and here again you insinuated in a different post about how Dean Baker's motivation for this paper (being an ACA supporter) must be conspiring to drive down wages of the medical profession to make ACA cheaper. I just don't know how one can respond to you.
- crdoconnor 11y ago
  >Your promotion of this odd conspiracy about bourgeoisie capitalist economists being bought out by think tanks This economist literally works for a think tank and his paper is published on that think tank's website. For it to be an actual conspiracy that he is bought out I think it would have to actually be hidden from view somehow. I can only speculate as to his motivations behind attacking doctors in this paper, but there isn't a shadow of a doubt that he is attacking them. You literally can't blame doctors' wages on the rise of income inequality if they've been falling. If the paper actually said that they were rising I could have understood but it doesn't. Dean Baker is just doing a rather pathetic exercise in misdirection by talking about wages in other countries and how doctor's wages haven't necessarily been falling as fast as everybody else's. >I just don't know how one can respond to you. Believe me, the feeling's mutual. Apparently some people are impressed by the thin veneer of academic pseudo-legitimacy that comes from putting a couple of equations in a PDF and turn off the critical thinking section in their skulls.
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    "Falling" is of little analytical meaning without a relative benchmark. You weren't displaying critical thought, you were engaging in a trite dismissal and then extrapolating an outlandish motive.
    - crdoconnor 11y ago
      >You weren't displaying critical thought, you were engaging in a trite dismissal I read the paper and researched its claims before attacking it. Did you do that before accusing me of trite dismissal?

mirimir 11y ago

All economic players are in theory subject to antitrust law. Anticompetitive behavior is in theory illegal. Union supporters negotiated an exception back in the day. So did the AMA, in part because it pretends to be a professional society. But in fact, the AMA has engaged in profoundly anticompetitive behavior from the start. For example, it regulates the physician supply by influencing policies of medical schools. It was modern pharmaceuticals that professionalized doctors and hospitals. Previously, symptomatic mitigation and surgery were about the only options. Doctors were not high-status professionals, barely above blacksmiths. National healthcare was the sane response to this clusterfuck. But not in the US, because that would be socialism. So it goes.

chimeracoder 11y ago
> For example, the AMA regulates the physician supply by influencing policies of medical schools. This is a common misconception that keeps popping up again and again. Reposting a comment from just four days ago: The AMA is a common scapegoat, except that the AMA has literally nothing to do with the number of of doctors supply-side. You're probably thinking of the AAMC, which has nothing to do with the AMA, and is responsible for the number of medical students who graduate each year from the US. Except the AAMC has very deliberately and openly increased the number of medical student slots each year for over a decade, specifically with this goal in mind. But even this is a moot point, because the number of people gradating with MDs is not the bottleneck - the problem is that doctors can't practice medicine until they complete a residency program. We graduate more medical students every year than we have residency slots available, so increasing the number of graduates even further will have no effect. Increasing the number of residency slots is up to Medicare, because Medicare funds residency programs nationwide, as residency programs do not make enough money to sustain themselves otherwise.
- mirimir 11y ago
  Maybe that's so now. But my comment addressed policy over several decades. And the AMA definitely played a role. Virtually all medical school faculty and administration are AMA members. It hasn't necessarily been a formal process, just an old-boys (literally, for decades) network.

busterarm 11y ago

It used to be that you didn't need any specialized degrees to make medical prosthetics, just training and a place willing to employ you, until there was suddenly a flood of interest into a well paying field. Then it rapidly self-organized and now basically requires a Masters to have employment consideration. And yes, the underlying technologies and skills required have gotten _a lot_ more advanced recently, but this all started happening before that.