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Call me crazy but doctors are over paid and given too much status in American society. Before computers you need highly intelligent doctors with the ability to

Call me crazy but doctors are over paid and given too much status in American society. Before computers you need highly intelligent doctors with the ability to hold huge amounts of medical knowledge in their heads at a minimum. Now you can google most. The value of a doctor in our society is objectively going down, the job is easier now more than ever. Not only that, the absurd rates of mal practice need to be given a critical eye. We need transparency about patient outcomes.

jhwang5 6y ago
Big part of the problem is the AMA which sets up all sorts of barriers to entry into the profession
briandear 6y ago
> Call me crazy but doctors are over paid and given too much status in American society. That's insane. You can google symptoms, but you can't google context. Doctors are paid to interpret not to regurgitate. As an example, let's talk airline pilots as an example, Air France Flight 447, the crash of an A330 over the Atlantic. The computers were giving incorrect airspeed readings because of frozen pitot tubes. The pilots, reacting based on the computers, ended up stalling the airplane. The computer gave erroneous information, the pilots (trained to fly the "Airbus way" -- i.e. the airplane knows more than you do,) reacted exactly as the computers told them to react. The "doctoring by computer" concept, while can be beneficial, can't replace the judgement of a human, just like highly automated flight decks, can't replace the skill of experienced pilots. Google also is a search engine. It only surfaces results that "rank" -- not necessarily results that are correct. And certainly not results that are necessarily correct for the specific combination of circumstances.
tellmelies 6y ago
By this logic all jobs are overpaid. Why should programmers command a high salary when anyone can search stackoverflow?
lotsofpulp 6y ago
A person capable of becoming an MD can most likely do many other things. But to be a doctor, they have to sacrifice their best years of life all the way until at least age 30, and work a minimum of 80 hours a week with sick people. And you have to move wherever you find a residency, so you don’t even get to be around or see family and friends. You’d have to dangle a pretty big carrot to get me to do that. Otherwise, change the system so that you don’t have to sacrifice the best decade of your life and more.
- jhwang5 6y ago
  Since doctors in other countries sacrifice similar amounts of time to become doctors, what makes US doctors so special? (We all know why)
  - empath75 6y ago
    Because Americans make more money for most equivalent jobs?
    - jhwang5 6y ago
      Or there's a systematic inflation of the cost of delivering healthcare?
      - jac241 6y ago
        Everyone loves to compare doctor salaries between the US and the UK, but they fail to compare the salaries for other professional roles. These kinds of jobs often pay the same 1.75-2x premium comparing the two countries. They also fail to compare doctor salaries with other countries like Canada, Switzerland, and Australia which also pay similar absolute amounts to physicians in the US. Doctor salaries are not the driving force of increased healthcare expenses in the US. Per unit of work, they're paid much less than they were in the late 90s. Here's a graph that shows one of the main culprits: https://i1.wp.com/investingdoc.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/admin-jobs.jpg?w=1024&ssl=1 https://i1.wp.com/investingdoc.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/0...
jac241 6y ago
Call me crazy but software engineers are over paid. All they do is Google for answers on stack overflow and copy and paste the code. You used to need highly intelligent engineers who could hold all the APIs in their head at a minimum. Now you can just Google for the documentation.
- husarcik 6y ago
  As someone who is getting their MD next year, I'd have to agree with jac241. It took me a weekend to understand and setup a kubernetes cluster yet it's taken me three years to even know the bare basics of medicine. Maybe it's a situation of you don't know what you don't know. Sure, you can Google symptoms but have you seen thousands of patients to know if you're right? On the tech side, I know how to setup a kubernetes cluster but do I know what to do when things go wrong? Most likely not.
  - jac241 6y ago
    M2 here. This site never gives doctors the benefit of the doubt and has some of the worst takes on the profession. Every thread where physicians get brought up you can count on someone saying they're overpaid, can EASILY be replaced by a google search, are using the AMA to limit the supply of doctors, etc. The AMA can't even prevent nurse practitioners from getting full practice authority to use their 500 hours of training to harm patients, how exactly are they limiting supply. For a site and a profession that values data and research so much, a lot of people on this site do zero research on the US and other countries' healthcare systems, how physicians and midlevels get paid, what factors are increasing healthcare costs before denigrating physicians as greedy and useless. People just have no idea what goes into training a physician. Even after 2 full years of studying medicine I feel like I don't know anything, the field is that huge. I assume some of the bad takes are due to most people on this site being young and only ever interfacing with the healthcare system whenever they get strep throat. Sure someone can Google that you need to treat strep throat with antibiotics (maybe they'll even pick the right one!), but make sure to warn them about post strep glomerulonephritis. Oh what's that, and why do I need to warn them about that and not rheumatic fever...

jhwang5 6y ago

Big part of the problem is the AMA which sets up all sorts of barriers to entry into the profession

briandear 6y ago

> Call me crazy but doctors are over paid and given too much status in American society. That's insane. You can google symptoms, but you can't google context. Doctors are paid to interpret not to regurgitate. As an example, let's talk airline pilots as an example, Air France Flight 447, the crash of an A330 over the Atlantic. The computers were giving incorrect airspeed readings because of frozen pitot tubes. The pilots, reacting based on the computers, ended up stalling the airplane. The computer gave erroneous information, the pilots (trained to fly the "Airbus way" -- i.e. the airplane knows more than you do,) reacted exactly as the computers told them to react. The "doctoring by computer" concept, while can be beneficial, can't replace the judgement of a human, just like highly automated flight decks, can't replace the skill of experienced pilots. Google also is a search engine. It only surfaces results that "rank" -- not necessarily results that are correct. And certainly not results that are necessarily correct for the specific combination of circumstances.

tellmelies 6y ago

By this logic all jobs are overpaid. Why should programmers command a high salary when anyone can search stackoverflow?

lotsofpulp 6y ago

A person capable of becoming an MD can most likely do many other things. But to be a doctor, they have to sacrifice their best years of life all the way until at least age 30, and work a minimum of 80 hours a week with sick people. And you have to move wherever you find a residency, so you don’t even get to be around or see family and friends. You’d have to dangle a pretty big carrot to get me to do that. Otherwise, change the system so that you don’t have to sacrifice the best decade of your life and more.

jhwang5 6y ago
Since doctors in other countries sacrifice similar amounts of time to become doctors, what makes US doctors so special? (We all know why)
- empath75 6y ago
  Because Americans make more money for most equivalent jobs?
  - jhwang5 6y ago
    Or there's a systematic inflation of the cost of delivering healthcare?
    - jac241 6y ago
      Everyone loves to compare doctor salaries between the US and the UK, but they fail to compare the salaries for other professional roles. These kinds of jobs often pay the same 1.75-2x premium comparing the two countries. They also fail to compare doctor salaries with other countries like Canada, Switzerland, and Australia which also pay similar absolute amounts to physicians in the US. Doctor salaries are not the driving force of increased healthcare expenses in the US. Per unit of work, they're paid much less than they were in the late 90s. Here's a graph that shows one of the main culprits: https://i1.wp.com/investingdoc.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/admin-jobs.jpg?w=1024&ssl=1 https://i1.wp.com/investingdoc.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/0...

jac241 6y ago

Call me crazy but software engineers are over paid. All they do is Google for answers on stack overflow and copy and paste the code. You used to need highly intelligent engineers who could hold all the APIs in their head at a minimum. Now you can just Google for the documentation.

husarcik 6y ago
As someone who is getting their MD next year, I'd have to agree with jac241. It took me a weekend to understand and setup a kubernetes cluster yet it's taken me three years to even know the bare basics of medicine. Maybe it's a situation of you don't know what you don't know. Sure, you can Google symptoms but have you seen thousands of patients to know if you're right? On the tech side, I know how to setup a kubernetes cluster but do I know what to do when things go wrong? Most likely not.
- jac241 6y ago
  M2 here. This site never gives doctors the benefit of the doubt and has some of the worst takes on the profession. Every thread where physicians get brought up you can count on someone saying they're overpaid, can EASILY be replaced by a google search, are using the AMA to limit the supply of doctors, etc. The AMA can't even prevent nurse practitioners from getting full practice authority to use their 500 hours of training to harm patients, how exactly are they limiting supply. For a site and a profession that values data and research so much, a lot of people on this site do zero research on the US and other countries' healthcare systems, how physicians and midlevels get paid, what factors are increasing healthcare costs before denigrating physicians as greedy and useless. People just have no idea what goes into training a physician. Even after 2 full years of studying medicine I feel like I don't know anything, the field is that huge. I assume some of the bad takes are due to most people on this site being young and only ever interfacing with the healthcare system whenever they get strep throat. Sure someone can Google that you need to treat strep throat with antibiotics (maybe they'll even pick the right one!), but make sure to warn them about post strep glomerulonephritis. Oh what's that, and why do I need to warn them about that and not rheumatic fever...