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There are too many patients and not enough doctors. This isn't caused by capitalism, capitalism doesn't limit the # of doctors. Becoming socialist doesn't magic
by JamesBarney 5y ago
There are too many patients and not enough doctors. This isn't caused by capitalism, capitalism doesn't limit the # of doctors. Becoming socialist doesn't magically allow doctors to see patients for twice as long. If we had socialism more people could afford doctors(a good thing!) but it would make this specific problem worse, because there would be more patients. This is caused by the AMA lobbying to limit the supply of doctors in order to drive up salaries.
It's why we have this.
United States – $316,000
Germany – $183,000
United Kingdom – $138,000
France – $98,000
Italy – $70,000
Spain – $57,000
Brazil – $47,000
Mexico – $12,000
- throw10920 5y ago> This is caused by the AMA lobbying to limit the supply of doctors in order to drive up salaries. This. This is the problem - not the vague spectre of "capitalism" being waved around.
- FollowingTheDao 5y agoSince when do salaries have nothing to do with capitalism?
- JamesBarney 5y agoThe Soviet Union had wages to, and far worse problems with shortages then capitalistic countries have ever had.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- e-dt 5y agoYes, but not in general shortages of doctors. It's a totally different problem, so this isn't really a helpful way to look at it. After all, if there's a shortage of cabbages, it doesn't mean the remaining cabbages benefit and can lobby to keep it that way!
- bryanlarsen 5y agoCabbage farmers can, though.
- e-dt 4y agoYes, but when that sort of thing happens in commodities it's an illegal cartel, whereas when it happens with jobs it's responsible self-regulation by a professional association.
- jacobr1 5y agoThe presumption is that under a "free market" the demand would drive more production - more doctors. But that the rules of the current system artificially restrict the supply of doctors. Some of that we want - credentials clearly serve a purpose - yet are the rules more restrictive than they should be? Should there be more residencies? Should we have more "lower-level" providers like nurse-practitioners, PAs or pharmacists that can prescribe? There is limited ability for the market to innovate in such a regulated environment.
- WalterSear 5y agoSince people refuse to see regulatory capture as an unavoidable feature of capitalism.
- throw10920 5y agoBecause it's factually not. At least, unless you define "capitalism" in a specific twisted way that includes "regulatory capture". Which I suppose a lot of socialists do...
- FollowingTheDao 5y agoIt’s funny you say this has nothing to do with capitalism but all the countries you listed have largely socialized medicine. Once capital gets power it uses a government to enforce that power.
- JamesBarney 5y agoRoughly a third of our healthcare spending is socialized medicine, and Medicare and Medicaid have the same issues we do.
- FollowingTheDao 5y ago1/3 < 3/3. We do not have anything close to socialized medicine.
- Vecr 5y agoI don't understand what you mean, not being universal does not have any bearing on that. The care is paid out of taxes.
- FollowingTheDao 5y agoI am on Medicare. Because it is not universal means it is only partly socialized and still operating inside of a non-socialized system. Why does this matter? I cannot get any doctor I want, only the ones taking Medicare, which are fewer and fewer, because they would rather only take people on private insurance. In France for example you can walk into any doctor and they will see you.
- AussieWog93 5y agoI live in a country with (mostly) free health care and we have 6-month wait lists too. Same shit in the UK, who invented the NHS. Please stop blaming every problem on your ideological pet peeve. Society is too complex for every single issue to be caused by capitalism, financialisation, the patriarchy or systemic racism.
- 5y ago
- thaumasiotes 5y agoThe book M.D.: Doctors Talk About Themselves actually interviews someone who discusses this problem, and inadvertently illustrates a problem American policy ran into. The interviewee says that the Reagan administration tried to drive down the cost of health care by increasing (as opposed to, say, lifting) the quota on production of doctors, with the idea in mind that more supply of doctors would drive down costs. And he goes on to say that the idea backfired by raising medical costs. In the interviewee's mind, the problem is that doctors can "make their own work" -- with more doctors around, more medical care can be performed than was possible with fewer doctors, and so the cost of health care went up instead of down, making the policy a mistake. That is the beginning and end of his analysis. No one asks whether the cost of particular treatments went up or down. If total national spending on health care went up, the policy is supposed to have been a failure.