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Disclaimer: I'm married to a doctor. That said, I agree with your point that they are over-paid, but I absolutely don't agree with the idea that you only need a

Disclaimer: I'm married to a doctor. That said, I agree with your point that they are over-paid, but I absolutely don't agree with the idea that you only need a moderate amount of intelligence to work as a physician. A slight majority of my friend group is physicians, both through my spouse's education and work and through a collegiate friend group that mostly went into medicine. While I have many, many complaints about the medical profession and many of the people who work at it, they are, virtually without exception, extremely intelligent people. The ones who weren't washed out at some point in the 4 years of university and subsequent 8-12 years of training. Some of the barriers to entry are excessive, but most of them are there because being a doctor is incredibly difficult.

magnamerc 7y ago
I didn't mean that to across the way it did. I know some doctors, and they are extremely intelligent people, but it's a selection bias due to the high educational requirements required to get into med school. I think my point is that you don't need to be extremely intelligent to learn or apply medicine. I'd say medicine is on par with engineering, but the requirements to become an engineer are way lower than the requirements to become a doctor.
vasco 7y ago
That's their argument, that the barriers to entry are too high. Obviously people who've successfully navigated those barriers will be inteligent and capable, but perhaps we could lower the average skill and knowledge level of doctors by 10% but reduce costs by 50% (by having more people into the profession) and therefore being able to provide appropriate care to more people and detect conditions earlier. This could make for a net-positive result in terms of overall health in society. Similarly, if you use technology to supplement a human doctor, you should likely be able to train doctors less and achieve similar outcomes.

magnamerc 7y ago

I didn't mean that to across the way it did. I know some doctors, and they are extremely intelligent people, but it's a selection bias due to the high educational requirements required to get into med school. I think my point is that you don't need to be extremely intelligent to learn or apply medicine. I'd say medicine is on par with engineering, but the requirements to become an engineer are way lower than the requirements to become a doctor.

vasco 7y ago

That's their argument, that the barriers to entry are too high. Obviously people who've successfully navigated those barriers will be inteligent and capable, but perhaps we could lower the average skill and knowledge level of doctors by 10% but reduce costs by 50% (by having more people into the profession) and therefore being able to provide appropriate care to more people and detect conditions earlier. This could make for a net-positive result in terms of overall health in society. Similarly, if you use technology to supplement a human doctor, you should likely be able to train doctors less and achieve similar outcomes.