I think the salary numbers are quite misleading. Most docs I know are workaholics and their pay per hour wouldn’t look as impressive. Not to mention that you still have to study as a doc which you don’t get paid for. Try cracking open a book after coming home from work. My friends in business hate it when prepping for the GMAT. The day to day is also quite tedious and even some docs I have followed that work at relatively relaxing jobs don’t have time to eat. Most docs have to take call which can mean staying overnight in the hospital or going for a week or more with the chance of someone calling you at 3AM. There are people I know who went to pharmacy or optometry school because they decided that medical school was just not worth it.

To the engineer from MIT – You should have went to med school after your PhD. It’s a field dominated by MD-PhD’s and medical students with multiple publications. One of the most competitive fields to match into, and to be honest a 3.1 GPA (even from MIT) work ethic would not have cut it. I know, because I have an engineering degree from a top10 undergrad school. It doesn’t matter where you went to undergrad. Medicine is all about repetition and memorization. There are people at my low tier med school who went to no name undergrads who are smarter than me and work like dogs and score in the top percentiles on national board tests. Even then most kids end up in primary care which pays no where close to 300-400k/year.

The LCME accredits US medical school spots but has increased that number to meet residency spots in recent years

number of medical schools isnt the kink in the pipeline shortage of docs.

number of US grads will meet or exceed number of residency spots in 2014. which just means none to few foreign mds in residency spots.

the LCME controls numbers of US grads and has been very good at increasing that number.

the real kink is the # of residency spots, which is necessary, though how long residency is in years for certain spots could he streamlined, but in senior residency years the resident functions like a junior attending often. That basically means the hospital gets a doc for just 45k a yr instead of the normal rate.

residency spots are funded through medicare and thats the real kink. Each resident makes a hospital more than it costs to fund their training through medicare. Hospitals need to start contribuing and privately funded residency spots are the only feasible solution for doctor shortage

AMA is not a cartel or even a union and has no real power. just a puppet for press and propaganda like this to shoot down docs who arent the real leak or cause of increased medical spending.

cut all doctor salaries in half and we will still be at this juncture in US

if a visit is paid by insurance the cost to consumer is insurance company overhead+insurance company profit+doctors cost

non profit insurance companies just have increased overhead like if the government ran it

like anything paid through insurance, what u pay in premiums costs more than the premium

like why never filing a car insurance claim means youll pay less in premium a year

you only need insurance for the unforseen or catastrophic or what exceeds your income

paying for regular doctor visits and other medical services you can expect to spend in a year will just cost the US more than paying a doc directly. Paying this way cuts out insurance overhead/profit and the docs cost of hirining a medical biller and having to wait to get paid for a service through insurance

same way its cheaper for me to have minimum insurance just for major accidents and pay out of pocket for minor fender benders or car problems which i can expect to get into.

insurance is run of the same principals and companies will continue to increase their profits as is their nature no matter what level of healthcare they provide

put a limit on the margin of profit that can be made on healthcare services and this would all be fixed. allow for reasonable salary for physicians and they will always be their. doctors arent taking billions in healthcare payments from US citizens and linining their pockets or paying out in stock dividends

absentee profiteers in every aspect lf healthcare is the cause of these problems. the money invested isnt helping our healthcare because it is not invested in ways that improve our health but in healthcare services that provide the most profit like meds for chronic conditions rather than vaccines or cures

Don’t Lawyers go the profession for love of giving people “justice”? Don’t Football players go for it for representing their country or state whatever, and make us “proud”. I think the logic is tenable to any other profession or service you can name. What prompted you to join your profession.. I wonder. Should or shouldn’t money become the secondary motivation everywhere. We know money matters everywhere.

If you are tired to hear the argument of medical debt and really think those young stupid fellows who joined it knowingly can be brushed aside. I can guarantee you students are getting smarter. The future medical applicants don’t look too great and it is no solace if junk fills up the void.

I can forego all actors and NBA players. Anyway I need those Doctors and a good quality one and may be a lawyer or two. I want them to be paid “substantially”. Can’t buy champagne with beer money, as simple as that.

It is true that involved in the all procedure was the diagnosis. The lesion could have been malignant. I understand that part, but do you think it’s worst $350 + 170 = $ 520 for a 5 minutes consultation.
Don’t you think that $170 would have been sufficient ( again only for 5 minutes of work).

another problem the AMA restriction on the number of doctors is a lack of competition not only of the fees but of the service itself.
In America, service is very important and well developed in many industries : 24 hrs banking,banks open on Saturdays, services at car dealership open late, grocery stores open all night etc…

Only in medicine is the absence of service that only a lack of competition could bring.
Most American have to take a day off or at least an afternoon off to go to a doctor’s appointment. It is virtually impossible to make an appointment after 4PM.
In France for example, you can make doctors appointments up until 7H30 PM and saturday doctors work until 1PM generally.
In small towns, doctors are on call one night a month. It means that they are available to patient all night that day.
If you have a mildly sick child at 10pm you do not have to go to the ER. You just have to call SOS MEDECIN and a young doctor (usually resident) would come to you with first doses of antibioics or other medications.
The victims of this lack of competition are the consumers.
I am tired to hear that most doctors are left with an average of $151 000 debt for medical school. They choose to study medicine, but they should not expect the consumers to pay for it by charging unfair and way above market price fees that exist nowhere else in the world.

What happen to the love or passion of helping others ? This should be the main motivation to become a doctors, not money.
Should doctors make a good living ? Definitely yes, they deserve it .
But should they organize a cartel style organisation to keep competition low and inconvenient service to customers ?
Definitely not!