The Problem of Doctors’ Salaries
All of my close friends are doctors and the toll that school and residency does on the body and mind is honestly shocking. I&#x27;d want to open up the residency and med school programs for nothing else but to not force our young doctors into 24 hour shifts. They&#x27;re treating these young doctors like it&#x27;s Hell Week in a fraternity, and the main excuse you&#x27;ll get from the AMA is because that&#x27;s what they (the older doctors) did so all of this fanfare is a right of passage towards full membership (attending physician) which unlocks all of these riches to justify sacrificing your youth for.<p>To me, that&#x27;s a much better narrative to support increasing the number of doctors than &quot;they get paid too much.&quot; Instead, this article reads like a con artist who is using slight-of-hand to distract you from the watch he&#x27;s taking from your pocket. The trick is the doctor&#x27;s salaries, but the real stealing is happening from the health insurance companies.<p>The article mentions how many billions of dollars this &quot;problem&quot; impacts the Federal budget. &quot;Billions&quot; - it&#x27;s a large number in absolute terms, but relative to the problems with our inflated military budget ($850B), it&#x27;s a pittance.<p>What I&#x27;m trying to get at is this feels like the kind of thing a propaganda outlet would do to give you a false enemy to hate. Even if the premise is grounded in truth (that US doctors are paid twice as much as everywhere else), it just feels like the wrong villain.