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> I hope this helps to decrease the costs of medical care in the US to some extent as it removes one pressure for doctors to earn extra money charging for thin

> I hope this helps to decrease the costs of medical care in the US to some extent as it removes one pressure for doctors to earn extra money charging for things that might not need to be needed. Physician earnings account for about 7% of total spending on healthcare. Of that 7%, the fraction due to student debt specifically is significant from the physician's perspective, but negligible from a systemic picture. This is, of course, assuming that physicians are charging for services that are not be needed in order to boost their earnings, which happens in some cases, but is not as systemic or widespread as people often think, due to the shift away from fee-for-service payment models and towards capitated care, and the opacity of the payment model to the physician at the point-of-care in many care delivery situations.

Eridrus 8y ago
I'm really interested in this info, can you tell me where you got the 7% from? Are there good in depth breakdowns of this?
- chimeracoder 8y ago
  It's a fairly easy statistic to find; here's the first hit on Google: https://www.medicalbag.com/finance/examining-physician-salaries-in-the-united-states/article/710038/ https://www.medicalbag.com/finance/examining-physician-salar... One caveat is that oftentimes you'll see higher numbers (in the range of 15-20%) cited, but that's usually because they're not distinguishing between doctors (MDs) and other clinical staff (nurses, physicians' assistants, etc.). In the aggregate, the latter account for about half, or in other words, roughly equal to what doctors in total pull in. As that article notes, this also doesn't mean that all of that money goes to the physicians themselves. Some portion is taken by the practices and groups that employ them, and a huge chunk of physicians' take-home pay is allocated towards business expenses[0]. For the context of the original article, only MDs are relevant, not what NPs, RNs, and so forth make. [0] Unlike software developers, who generally have their business expenses covered by their employer, physicians are typically expected to cover all of theirs out-of-pocket, which means that the seemingly-high salaries that you often see listed aren't directly comparable to salaries in many other fields, where the out-of-pocket expense are much lower.
  - Eridrus 8y ago
    Yeah, individual statistics are easy to find, i was hoping someone had pulled it all together into a detailed report or book or something.
dnomad 8y ago
That's a very strange way to consider salaries. 7% of the healthcare output is extraordinary. By any measure US doctors are obscenely overpaid for what is ultimately not very creative or challenging work. On average US doctors earn 2-5x more than doctors in other developed countries [1] -- while delivering significantly worse healthcare outcomes. Some estimates put this "excess income" at an extra $100 billion a year but I've seen estimates of a quarter trillion a year that gets sucked up by doctors -- again, for delivering worse care. The priestly incomes that these NYU graduates will go on to earn is precisely why NYU can offer free tuition. Attracting the best medical talent, even if you pay for all their training (call it half a million dollars a pop), can probably still be profitable if this talent can be leveraged by NYU's network of private care facilities. [1] https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/10/25/doctors-salaries-pay-disparities-000557 https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/10/25/doctors-sal...
- briandear 8y ago
  > On average US doctors earn 2-5x more than doctors in other developed countries Software developers also make 2-5x more than developers in other developed countries. So do many other professions.

Eridrus 8y ago

I'm really interested in this info, can you tell me where you got the 7% from? Are there good in depth breakdowns of this?

chimeracoder 8y ago
It's a fairly easy statistic to find; here's the first hit on Google: https://www.medicalbag.com/finance/examining-physician-salaries-in-the-united-states/article/710038/ https://www.medicalbag.com/finance/examining-physician-salar... One caveat is that oftentimes you'll see higher numbers (in the range of 15-20%) cited, but that's usually because they're not distinguishing between doctors (MDs) and other clinical staff (nurses, physicians' assistants, etc.). In the aggregate, the latter account for about half, or in other words, roughly equal to what doctors in total pull in. As that article notes, this also doesn't mean that all of that money goes to the physicians themselves. Some portion is taken by the practices and groups that employ them, and a huge chunk of physicians' take-home pay is allocated towards business expenses[0]. For the context of the original article, only MDs are relevant, not what NPs, RNs, and so forth make. [0] Unlike software developers, who generally have their business expenses covered by their employer, physicians are typically expected to cover all of theirs out-of-pocket, which means that the seemingly-high salaries that you often see listed aren't directly comparable to salaries in many other fields, where the out-of-pocket expense are much lower.
- Eridrus 8y ago
  Yeah, individual statistics are easy to find, i was hoping someone had pulled it all together into a detailed report or book or something.

dnomad 8y ago

That's a very strange way to consider salaries. 7% of the healthcare output is extraordinary. By any measure US doctors are obscenely overpaid for what is ultimately not very creative or challenging work. On average US doctors earn 2-5x more than doctors in other developed countries [1] -- while delivering significantly worse healthcare outcomes. Some estimates put this "excess income" at an extra $100 billion a year but I've seen estimates of a quarter trillion a year that gets sucked up by doctors -- again, for delivering worse care. The priestly incomes that these NYU graduates will go on to earn is precisely why NYU can offer free tuition. Attracting the best medical talent, even if you pay for all their training (call it half a million dollars a pop), can probably still be profitable if this talent can be leveraged by NYU's network of private care facilities. [1] https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/10/25/doctors-salaries-pay-disparities-000557 https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/10/25/doctors-sal...

briandear 8y ago
> On average US doctors earn 2-5x more than doctors in other developed countries Software developers also make 2-5x more than developers in other developed countries. So do many other professions.