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It can cost a million dollars to become a doctor in the US. Less if you go to public schools and pinch pennies during your time at school but still half a milli

It can cost a million dollars to become a doctor in the US. Less if you go to public schools and pinch pennies during your time at school but still half a million or more. Doctors earn high salaries because if they didn’t we wouldn’t be able to convince kids to become doctors. We already have a severe shortage of geriatric doctors because kids don’t want to enter the field and get paid Medicare rates after accumulating a mountain of debt. No easy solutions. We have built this problem up over many decades and it will take many painful decades to unwind it all.

londons_explore 7y ago
Make becoming a doctor cheaper? Teaching isn't inherently expensive - you can do an online e-learning based system with online tests for 90% of the course content. This whole idea of having prestigious universities with limited class sizes to maintain exclusivity isn't helping the nation.
- hurricanetc 7y ago
  That’s not an easy solution. Entire economies revolve around education costs. Not to mention there are tens of thousands of doctors that already paid the sky high costs. What do we do with them? This problem is deeply entrenched into the American economy. Tentacles everywhere. Nothing exists in isolation that can be easily and painlessly fixed with the flick of a pen.
  - SllX 7y ago
    You don’t do anything for them, you let time and the market sort things out rather than trying to engineer any kind of solution. Just decrease the cost of becoming and practicing as a doctor and you’ll eventually get more doctors who will have to compete, and thus decrease their own fees. What are the relevant costs? How many of them are imposed by the government?
- zxcmx 7y ago
  Or make it easier to pull doctors in specific fields from countries where cost disease isn't hitting training so hard. Or allow nurses or other trained, experienced personnel to take on more duties. Or innovate on efficiency and find ways to use and train technicians or teams thereof to perform specific procedures. Doctors earn high salaries for several reasons - one of which is that they have a strong "union" that is deeply involved in regulating the supply of doctors and their specific responsibilities. I'm not even sure the current situation genuinely benefits doctors themselves anymore since so many seem to be chronically overworked.
rayiner 7y ago
I strongly suspect the main reason is that the AMA limits the supply of doctors. The U.S. has 40% fewer physicians per capita than Germany (and a much less healthy populace).
JamesBarney 7y ago
> Doctors earn high salaries because if they didn’t we wouldn’t be able to convince kids to become doctors. Are you arguing the reason we can't have more doctor's is because not enough people want to be doctor's? Have you looked at medical school acceptance rates? > No easy solutions. We have built this problem up over many decades and it will take many painful decades to unwind it all. There are plenty of easy solutions. Stop requiring a college degree for medical school. Increase the number of medical school slots. Increase how much nurse practitioners can do. But the is fighting all of them tooth and nail.
- hurricanetc 7y ago
  >Are you arguing the reason we can't have more doctor's is because not enough people want to be doctor's? Have you looked at medical school acceptance rates? No that is not what I was arguing. Becoming a doctor is prohibitively expensive but being a doctor pays handsomely. If cost and salary were "normalized" nothing would change but it is impossible to just change one of the two. Thus my argument is that we can't just pay doctors less unless we also make becoming a doctor cheaper. >There are plenty of easy solutions. Stop requiring a college degree for medical school. Increase the number of medical school slots. Increase how much nurse practitioners can do. But the is fighting all of them tooth and nail. Easy to say, difficult to do. You can't just instantly suck money out of areas of the economy. Things take time to adjust.
  - JamesBarney 7y ago
    Tuition for public medical schools in Texas is close to ~$18,000 a year but they still get paid very well. Doctor's get paid well because there is a shortage due to restrictive licensing, not because it's expensive to become a doctor. You're right that it is politically difficult. I just meant it was easy in that the solutions are obvious and don't require hard trade offs.

londons_explore 7y ago

Make becoming a doctor cheaper? Teaching isn't inherently expensive - you can do an online e-learning based system with online tests for 90% of the course content. This whole idea of having prestigious universities with limited class sizes to maintain exclusivity isn't helping the nation.

hurricanetc 7y ago
That’s not an easy solution. Entire economies revolve around education costs. Not to mention there are tens of thousands of doctors that already paid the sky high costs. What do we do with them? This problem is deeply entrenched into the American economy. Tentacles everywhere. Nothing exists in isolation that can be easily and painlessly fixed with the flick of a pen.
- SllX 7y ago
  You don’t do anything for them, you let time and the market sort things out rather than trying to engineer any kind of solution. Just decrease the cost of becoming and practicing as a doctor and you’ll eventually get more doctors who will have to compete, and thus decrease their own fees. What are the relevant costs? How many of them are imposed by the government?
zxcmx 7y ago
Or make it easier to pull doctors in specific fields from countries where cost disease isn't hitting training so hard. Or allow nurses or other trained, experienced personnel to take on more duties. Or innovate on efficiency and find ways to use and train technicians or teams thereof to perform specific procedures. Doctors earn high salaries for several reasons - one of which is that they have a strong "union" that is deeply involved in regulating the supply of doctors and their specific responsibilities. I'm not even sure the current situation genuinely benefits doctors themselves anymore since so many seem to be chronically overworked.

rayiner 7y ago

I strongly suspect the main reason is that the AMA limits the supply of doctors. The U.S. has 40% fewer physicians per capita than Germany (and a much less healthy populace).

JamesBarney 7y ago

> Doctors earn high salaries because if they didn’t we wouldn’t be able to convince kids to become doctors. Are you arguing the reason we can't have more doctor's is because not enough people want to be doctor's? Have you looked at medical school acceptance rates? > No easy solutions. We have built this problem up over many decades and it will take many painful decades to unwind it all. There are plenty of easy solutions. Stop requiring a college degree for medical school. Increase the number of medical school slots. Increase how much nurse practitioners can do. But the is fighting all of them tooth and nail.

hurricanetc 7y ago
>Are you arguing the reason we can't have more doctor's is because not enough people want to be doctor's? Have you looked at medical school acceptance rates? No that is not what I was arguing. Becoming a doctor is prohibitively expensive but being a doctor pays handsomely. If cost and salary were "normalized" nothing would change but it is impossible to just change one of the two. Thus my argument is that we can't just pay doctors less unless we also make becoming a doctor cheaper. >There are plenty of easy solutions. Stop requiring a college degree for medical school. Increase the number of medical school slots. Increase how much nurse practitioners can do. But the is fighting all of them tooth and nail. Easy to say, difficult to do. You can't just instantly suck money out of areas of the economy. Things take time to adjust.
- JamesBarney 7y ago
  Tuition for public medical schools in Texas is close to ~$18,000 a year but they still get paid very well. Doctor's get paid well because there is a shortage due to restrictive licensing, not because it's expensive to become a doctor. You're right that it is politically difficult. I just meant it was easy in that the solutions are obvious and don't require hard trade offs.