I see this argument made often on HN. I would imagine if we compared software engineering salaries in these same countries you would see that similarly software engineers in the US are also "overpaid".

Software

United States of America $95,879

United Kingdom $68,664 = 72% USA

Germany $61,390 = 64% USA

France $47,617 = 50% USA

Medicine

United States of America $313,000

United Kingdom $138,000 = 44% USA

Germany $163,000 = 52% USA

France $108,000 = 35% USA

(I believe the software salaries I've sourced are somewhat conservative)

[0] https://www.codingame.com/work/blog/find-developers/average-...

This will be a tough problem to solve. We could start by eliminating the AMA.

> "your salary will now be half and we're maxing our your workload"

should be fine if they pay their student loans no? isnt that the main reason the salaries are so high? cost of living + debt

> isnt that the main reason the salaries are so high?

It's because the NIH limits the amounts of medical residencies in the country, and to become a doctor with a license to practice, you must have completed residency somewhere. The amount of doctors in the US are kept at low numbers because of this.

I thought it was the AMA, but yeah I know about this and agree. This is the real problem

AMA lobbies but doesn't decide how residencies are funded.

I didn’t know that. Why does the NIH limit the number of residencies?

Medicare funds medical residency (not the NIH and not the AMA). The 1997 balanced budget act passed by congress limited the expansion of new medical residency training.

[0] https://www.npr.org/2018/03/09/592333771/severe-shortage-of-...

Thanks for the correction and source.

Professional organizations have stronger incentives to increase their compensation through restricting supply instead of decreasing their compensation to help their customers.

The AMA is actually doing a great job at this recently compared to the ABA, where there have been too many lawyers graduating recently for insane salaries except at the top.

Imagine you were working in an industry where you got to decide the number of people you can let in behind you.

The option almost everyone picks is “no one”. Keep supply of your services low and increasing demand means more money for you.

Paying off 200K in debt with a 300K minimum salary is pretty trivial unless you immediately qualify for a 4 million dollar mortgage, buy a BMW, then get divorced six times after med school.

cost of living isnt the reason for high salaries in Medicines. Unlike tech, salaries in medicine increase as you go to rural and/or underserved areas. It is driven by supply/demand and quality of life in urban vs rural areas.

Sort of, the supply of physicians is artificially limited by the AMA - which dictates how many physicians there are. That keeps the cost of physicians nice and high.

100% agree but note that the AMA's limits are at a national level. So the [very high] base salaries are indeed driven by scarcity (as dictated by medical boards.) However the local scarcity is not driven by the AMA (note the salaries just get even higher! in remote locales as the local scarcity compounds atop national scarcity.)

> want to see how many physicians stick around

Why would they bother to leave? Physician salaries might still very well be highest in the world.