The case against masks at school

Re:The case against masks at school by JPKab on Thursday January 27, 2022 @11:23PM (#30110691)

You can't open up more medical schools because the American Medical Association has lobbied for decades and use their accreditation authority to put a cap on the number of seats in med schools in the US. There's been virtually no change since the 1980s despite a 30% increase in the population.

They are perhaps one of the most significant drags on economic growth in the history of the United States. Because of the artificially induced scarcity, we pay mediocre physicians the wages that CEOs earn in other industries.

Everyone in the US thinks insurance companies are to blame, while they are certainly not efficient, there have been numerous studies that show that the majority of growth in price increases in medicine are due to physician wages and their organized bargaining power with insurance companies driving up prices.

What other service have you encountered where you routinely have the person you are paying reschedule your appointments at the last minute? Thanks to the American Medical Association, they have the ability to do this with impunity. What's insane is we actually have to import medical workers from overseas where they are trained in countries that don't have an evil organization limiting supply.

Knowing about this has made it even more unbearable to get scolded by these people for 2 years. I'm terribly sorry that they have to endure such horrible conditions while earning over $400,000 a year. It really is primarily a profession of non-creative, rule following mid-wits, kissing the ass of their licensing boards and taking defacto bribes from pharma reps to push the latest overprescribed Big Pharma product.

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Re:The case against masks at school by tagoregrtst on Friday January 28, 2022 @11:15AM (#30116577)

“ You can't open up more medical schools because the American Medical Association has lobbied for decades and use their accreditation authority to put a cap on the number of seats in med schools in the US. ”

Thats what I was implying, but I wasn’t sure if this was also the case in the US as in other countries. Like you say, its their doing so they can go and cry me a river for all I care.

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Re:The case against masks at school by nradov on Friday January 28, 2022 @02:14PM (#30119045)

That's not correct. The actual bottleneck in training more physicians is lack of federal funding for residency slots. Every year about 5% of the students who graduate from accredited medical schools fail to get matched to a residency program and are thus unable to practice medicine. Contrary to your claim, the American Medical Association has actually been lobbying for increased residency funding for years, and even contributed their own money.

https://www.ama-assn.org/press-center/press-releases/ama-fun...

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Re:The case against masks at school by JPKab on Friday January 28, 2022 @05:07PM (#30121077)

Why does the federal government need to fund the training of doctors? They don't fund the training of software engineers considering that universities do a pretty poor job of preparing somebody for a position at a software company. The vast majority of computer science graduates I've hired require extensive on the job training before I can trust them with anything. I've actually had to fire several.

If you're talking about clinics catering to poor populations. Why can't they use their Medicare money?

I'm sorry, I don't trust anything from the AMA because they are a lobbying organization. Why don't I just start sending links to the American Petroleum Institute while we're at it?

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Re:The case against masks at school by nradov on Friday January 28, 2022 @06:17PM (#30121830)

The federal government doesn't necessarily need to fund the residency training of doctors, but if we want more doctors then that's the fastest way to get them. Most teaching hospitals are non-profits so if they had to self fund residency programs then they would have to raise prices to patients. Hospitals barely break even (or less) on many Medicare service fees so those don't provide much margin to fund residency programs. That is the reality of our situation regardless of whether you trust the AMA.

Yes the American Petroleum Institute is a good source of information on some topics. They're certainly biased and I disagree with some of their conclusions, but they publish some accurate data and it's worth understanding their perspective.

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