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Doctors can rack up hundreds of thousands in debt just getting to the point where they can bill. Additionally, malpractice insurance is insanely expensive, as a

Doctors can rack up hundreds of thousands in debt just getting to the point where they can bill. Additionally, malpractice insurance is insanely expensive, as are rents in typical medical spaces. I can't see what doctors charge going down without addressing at least some of this.

steveBK123 3y ago
Yes. I said they get paid well but I didn’t say that it is bad or makes them bad. Educational costs and duration means putting their life on hold well past the point your median FAANGer is taking in big bucks. So they expect the pay to start paying down that debt & lost time. But other countries get by without their doctors accruing a mountain of educational costs and time spent in apprentice like conditions. AMA is a cartel. Imagine if SWEs managed to create a certification process essentially locking out H1Bs and constrained the number of new SWEs domestically minted.
- bdcravens 3y ago
  For sure, restructuring how we get doctors to a point where they can begin practicing is a necessary first step to addressing cost. Throughout the discussions on the topic, the comparison with SWEs keeps sticking with me: there's no world where someone hacking together JS scripts should make more than someone healing human bodies (in terms of "real" take home pay, ie, after fees, debt payback, etc)
  - steveBK123 3y ago
    Arguably you are totally correct in that assertion of relative value to society. It may actually be the case too, on average, in the US. Note a quick google search says theres 1M doctors in the US and the average salary is somewhere in the $250-400K range depending on source. Meanwhile Google also returns me "The average salary for a Software Engineer is $117654 per year in United States." - Indeed. Allegedly there's 4M of us weirdos here too. When we get out of the staff engineer FAANG & Wall St tech bubble the $250k/500k/1M TC numbers don't really exist. And there's only so many seats within the bubble making those numbers anyway, what maybe 50-100K total out of a country of 4M SWEs. Plenty of SWEs on Wall St never make more than $250k before "getting retired" (in the Bladerunner sense). Likewise most SWEs working in Fortune 500 companies are clearly barely entering the six figure TC range.
FireBeyond 3y ago
> Additionally, malpractice insurance is insanely expensive It really isn't. But it's a trope that helps the AMA's argument about limiting supply of new doctors. Anesthesiologist average salary: $410K/year, average malpractice insurance: $13K. Family practice: $250K, $10K. Obstetricians: $390K/year, $42K. Not that these aren't negligible amounts, but these are well within affordability AND only going down as more and more states implement caps on malpractice lawsuit payouts.
- infamouscow 3y ago
  Have you even looked at the difference in take home pay is between a practicing medical doctor and SWE in the last 25 years?
  - steveBK123 3y ago
    And doctors can practice anywhere there’s human settlement. Choose whatever range of lifestyle they want with a cartel endorsed golden ticket to high average pay. SWEs are generally fenced in to a few HCOL urban areas to earn high pay.
    - infamouscow 3y ago
      Doctors can only practice in states they have passed board licensing exams for. Doctors can only practice in states where they can get malpractice insurance. Doctors don't have the luxury of switching specialties like SWEs. A pathologist can't just switch to a cardiologist by practicing nights and weekends. Doctors have to comply with additional local public health regulations artificially limiting the number of medical staff. I can go on..
      - FireBeyond 3y ago
        > Doctors have to comply with additional local public health regulations artificially limiting the number of medical staff. This is a curious way of describing the lobbying and other efforts that doctor's OWN body, the AMA, aggressively and successfully continues to do to limit physician supply. That particular call is coming from inside the house. And based on the AMA's history, leadership, and so forth, the majority of physicians are entirely onboard.

steveBK123 3y ago

Yes. I said they get paid well but I didn’t say that it is bad or makes them bad. Educational costs and duration means putting their life on hold well past the point your median FAANGer is taking in big bucks. So they expect the pay to start paying down that debt & lost time. But other countries get by without their doctors accruing a mountain of educational costs and time spent in apprentice like conditions. AMA is a cartel. Imagine if SWEs managed to create a certification process essentially locking out H1Bs and constrained the number of new SWEs domestically minted.

bdcravens 3y ago
For sure, restructuring how we get doctors to a point where they can begin practicing is a necessary first step to addressing cost. Throughout the discussions on the topic, the comparison with SWEs keeps sticking with me: there's no world where someone hacking together JS scripts should make more than someone healing human bodies (in terms of "real" take home pay, ie, after fees, debt payback, etc)
- steveBK123 3y ago
  Arguably you are totally correct in that assertion of relative value to society. It may actually be the case too, on average, in the US. Note a quick google search says theres 1M doctors in the US and the average salary is somewhere in the $250-400K range depending on source. Meanwhile Google also returns me "The average salary for a Software Engineer is $117654 per year in United States." - Indeed. Allegedly there's 4M of us weirdos here too. When we get out of the staff engineer FAANG & Wall St tech bubble the $250k/500k/1M TC numbers don't really exist. And there's only so many seats within the bubble making those numbers anyway, what maybe 50-100K total out of a country of 4M SWEs. Plenty of SWEs on Wall St never make more than $250k before "getting retired" (in the Bladerunner sense). Likewise most SWEs working in Fortune 500 companies are clearly barely entering the six figure TC range.

FireBeyond 3y ago

> Additionally, malpractice insurance is insanely expensive It really isn't. But it's a trope that helps the AMA's argument about limiting supply of new doctors. Anesthesiologist average salary: $410K/year, average malpractice insurance: $13K. Family practice: $250K, $10K. Obstetricians: $390K/year, $42K. Not that these aren't negligible amounts, but these are well within affordability AND only going down as more and more states implement caps on malpractice lawsuit payouts.

infamouscow 3y ago
Have you even looked at the difference in take home pay is between a practicing medical doctor and SWE in the last 25 years?
- steveBK123 3y ago
  And doctors can practice anywhere there’s human settlement. Choose whatever range of lifestyle they want with a cartel endorsed golden ticket to high average pay. SWEs are generally fenced in to a few HCOL urban areas to earn high pay.
  - infamouscow 3y ago
    Doctors can only practice in states they have passed board licensing exams for. Doctors can only practice in states where they can get malpractice insurance. Doctors don't have the luxury of switching specialties like SWEs. A pathologist can't just switch to a cardiologist by practicing nights and weekends. Doctors have to comply with additional local public health regulations artificially limiting the number of medical staff. I can go on..
    - FireBeyond 3y ago
      > Doctors have to comply with additional local public health regulations artificially limiting the number of medical staff. This is a curious way of describing the lobbying and other efforts that doctor's OWN body, the AMA, aggressively and successfully continues to do to limit physician supply. That particular call is coming from inside the house. And based on the AMA's history, leadership, and so forth, the majority of physicians are entirely onboard.