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Yes, they do. In my opinion, the biggest cause of this is the artificial caps on the number of doctors graduated every year. Only a small fraction of qualifie
by brown 17y ago
Yes, they do.
In my opinion, the biggest cause of this is the artificial caps on the number of doctors graduated every year. Only a small fraction of qualified med school applicants are accepted each year. (In my idealism) more doctors would create more of a free market. The market would find ways to identify high quality doctors who deserve $1m a year, but there would also be the $200k/yr doctors for normal middle class and $50k doctors for low income areas.
The cynic would say it's because the medical community is being protectionist. The conservative would say it's those pesky liberals worrying too much about our safety. The doctors I've worked with speculate it's because of the "priest" like status that doctors have historically held in society.
For hackers... well, let's just say there's a lot of money to be made in medical software. Doctors value their time very much and are willing to pay silly amounts of money for modest efficiency improvements. Most hackers are scared away from medical software because of concerns of excess regulation and complexity. That's a fair concern, but that doesn't mean there's still not good opportunities.
- fnid 17y agoDoctors haven't always held priestlike status. They used to be normal everyday people a couple hundred years ago.
- tokenadult 17y agoEconomist Martin Feldstein found out a long time ago that increasing the supply of doctors just increases the share of national income that all doctors enjoy, and still results in high incomes for each doctor, because doctors refer to other doctors. The United States has a higher supply of medical doctors per capita than most countries, and those doctors make a good living. After edit: Here's a link to a follow-up paper by that economist on the issue of physician income: http://lingli.ccer.edu.cn/he2007/ref/1014/reply.pdf http://lingli.ccer.edu.cn/he2007/ref/1014/reply.pdf