3 ms·

I suspect some of that is due to 4 years of med school (at a cost of $200k-$500k) followed by 3-7 years of low paying residencies, when you could alternatively

• ryathal 3y ago
  The cost of school is fairly minor in the reason's not to become a doctor. It's the massive increase in administration overhead that has reduced a doctor's time spent treating patients and practicing medicine significantly. EMR systems are slow compared to paper/dictation from a doctor's perspective, they also produce extremely verbose reports, so more time is spent sifting through records to find the useful bits. Doctor's need to perform X task that is often irrelevant to qualify for increased reimbursement from Medicare. Doctors have to justify why they prescribed X medication with prior auths and appeals just to get a patient the help they need. The additional scrutiny on opioid medications forces people to come in more often even if they've been compliant and successfully managed for years. Doctors that serve the neediest patient populations get rewarded with the most expensive malpractice insurance, because poor people are far more litigious than average, and often get paid less as Medicaid has some of the lowest reimbursement levels.