Re:The Problem of Doctors’ Salaries
by SilasX on Wednesday November 22, 2017 @02:50PM
(#15759928)
>> The typical doctor would not qualify to work at Google.
>The top ones absolutely would.
I was referring to the typical one.
>Medical schools could accept someone straight out of high school. Except they don't, because the top-performing matriculants are those with a degree in the humanities, followed by those with a degree in the social sciences. Pre-med, amusingly, comes in dead last.
But they're not even considering those without a four-year -- that's another cause of low supply.
>This may be the funniest thing I've read in this thread. No, compared to the other options available for a bright, qualified college student, going into medicine is probably the worst option if you want to optimize for either wealth or social status.
You're saying the typical doctor has lower social status than the typical CS job or finance?
>But sure, if you want to propose an incredibly convoluted process for filtering away the top prospective doctors (incentivizing them towards finance and STEM instead, for the better pay and respect), replacing them instead with less-qualified, middle-of-the-pack, independently-wealthy people who are willing to take on an extremely large and risky debt load because they can afford to and they don't have any other well-paying options...
That's a strawman -- the comparison was to doing e.g. 10% more residencies by having them 10% less funded. Still no requirement for independent wealth.
>But then please stop derailing these conversations by talking about lifting non-existent requirements, or making rather pedantic quibbles about terminology. When we're talking institutional policy, it's perfectly fine to say that an existing subsidy is "the bottleneck", in the sense that, ceteris paribus, increasing it would alleviate the problem and decreasing it would exacerbate it.
When you talk about "the bottleneck", has a precise meaning: "this is the limiting factor that must be relaxed for any growth". If that criterion doesn't hold, it's just one of many factors and one of many options to consider.
When you say that Medicare subsides are "the" bottleneck, you're claiming it's literally impossible to have more doctors unless a government agency spends more tax money on it. That's every bit as false as the equivalent claim about Hamilton in LA and the TSA: if the private market is already willing to pay, and to be paid, enough for it to happen, the problem can't be insufficient subsidies, but a refusal to implement well-trod solutions (or the regulations that prevent that well-trod solution).
That is definitely not a pedantic quibble, but the difference between "this needs more money" and "this only needs more money because they're adhering to harmful practices" (like rejecting qualified students who don't yet have a four year degree, which they're apparently doing even if not required).
>The top ones absolutely would.
I was referring to the typical one.
>Medical schools could accept someone straight out of high school. Except they don't, because the top-performing matriculants are those with a degree in the humanities, followed by those with a degree in the social sciences. Pre-med, amusingly, comes in dead last.
But they're not even considering those without a four-year -- that's another cause of low supply.
>This may be the funniest thing I've read in this thread. No, compared to the other options available for a bright, qualified college student, going into medicine is probably the worst option if you want to optimize for either wealth or social status.
You're saying the typical doctor has lower social status than the typical CS job or finance?
>But sure, if you want to propose an incredibly convoluted process for filtering away the top prospective doctors (incentivizing them towards finance and STEM instead, for the better pay and respect), replacing them instead with less-qualified, middle-of-the-pack, independently-wealthy people who are willing to take on an extremely large and risky debt load because they can afford to and they don't have any other well-paying options...
That's a strawman -- the comparison was to doing e.g. 10% more residencies by having them 10% less funded. Still no requirement for independent wealth.
>But then please stop derailing these conversations by talking about lifting non-existent requirements, or making rather pedantic quibbles about terminology. When we're talking institutional policy, it's perfectly fine to say that an existing subsidy is "the bottleneck", in the sense that, ceteris paribus, increasing it would alleviate the problem and decreasing it would exacerbate it.
When you talk about "the bottleneck", has a precise meaning: "this is the limiting factor that must be relaxed for any growth". If that criterion doesn't hold, it's just one of many factors and one of many options to consider.
When you say that Medicare subsides are "the" bottleneck, you're claiming it's literally impossible to have more doctors unless a government agency spends more tax money on it. That's every bit as false as the equivalent claim about Hamilton in LA and the TSA: if the private market is already willing to pay, and to be paid, enough for it to happen, the problem can't be insufficient subsidies, but a refusal to implement well-trod solutions (or the regulations that prevent that well-trod solution).
That is definitely not a pedantic quibble, but the difference between "this needs more money" and "this only needs more money because they're adhering to harmful practices" (like rejecting qualified students who don't yet have a four year degree, which they're apparently doing even if not required).