In plenty of other countries doctors are paid substantially less and the quality of healthcare is better. I don't think it's impossible for the U.S. to do what everyone else is already doing.

The statistics in similar free market countries (labor, not health care) are curious. Interested in any links you have, but this NYT blog post [1] seems to show that, GDP-per-capita normalized (which seems reasonable; second chart), there isn't that large of a divergence between what I would assume would be comparable nations.

Nurses make 0.9-1.4x, GPs 1.7-4.1x, and specialists 1.7-7.6x GDPpc.

Certainly a range, but nothing jumps out at me as "the US is an order of magnitude outlier."

I'd be fascinated to make a further breakdown of these numbers in terms of style of country's health care system, to see what correlations drop out though...

[1] https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/how-much-do-do...

However, I doubt the quality of care is better BECAUSE they are paid less.

It should be possible to train doctors faster tho. Asking them to go through four additional years of undergraduate program before they study medicine just adds years to it.

Sure. I'd also look at whether it's possible to train people to do specific procedures without needing to learn a lot of irrelevant stuff.

Coding bootcamp doctors?

I don't know biology but I took a 6 week class on plastic surgery.....

Something like that, as long as they know how to perform the specific procedure and how to deal with all the things that can go wrong.

The coding equivalent of doctors training would be a) taking a general bachelor's degree b) taking a 4 year computer science degree c) specific training in programming in 24 different languages and 400 frameworks d) get a job programming in Java and eventually forgetting most of the other stuff.

I think there would be a lot of merit to a workshop + 1 certified engineer method. Allow a medical facility to employ less-generally trained specialists (e.g. nurse practitioners) to perform procedures, as long as they have one generalist with deeper knowledge on site during procedures and who signs off on courses of treatment.

I realize this is somewhat the resident model, but it seems like there's room to expand that, decrease costs, and provide a job opportunity for people who are fine accepting a lower salary and stopping their medical training at that point.

Having had a few friends go through medical school, I absolutely have compassion for their side of the equation. They go into extensive debt (yes, usually with good loan terms) on the promise of "if you make it, then you'll be able to repay this / have the debt forgiven." But it doesn't seem like there's any "I don't want to go all the way" escape route.

>If you paid doctors less, there's no reward for spending your entire 20's and early 30s in training, already earning almost nothing. Nobody, especially nobody talented, will do it.

I don't think that's true. If you look at admissions to even second rate schools there are many times more students that there are spots. Students with grade point averages in the high nineties are being turned down and others are not even attempting it because the odds are so slim. Medicine as a profession is very prestigious because it carries a strong association with helping people and requiring high intelligence. Reducing wages might actually increase the quality of doctors because you might tempt some into other professions who are interested in it mostly for financial reasons and bring in some other people who are very passionate but might not have done it because of the very tough competition.