[quote=SK in CV][quote=livinincali][quote=SK in CV]Not really. At least in big cities, new docs are commonly getting $100K sign on bonuses. Internal med and Peds starting at $175K plus. It can be a lot of debt, and takes a long time, but if those kind of salaries suck, I’d like to know what professions are getting good starting salaries.[/quote]
My point isn’t that the current salaries are bad. They’re reasonable compared to debt. The issue would be most general physician salaries are much lower in the rest of the world. Depending on the country it could be 30 to 50% lower. If our goal is to reform the medical system to something more like the rest of the world (many of you advocate for this), then there’s a significant risk that your salary will be lower than the current salaries.
If we’re trying to control medical costs it’s hard to imagine workers in the medical fields will be better off. Maybe if the government wipes out the debt and indirectly lowers salaries you might be about the same as before. It’s hard to say what the impact would be of a single payer control cost system if we ever get there.[/quote]
It’s not hard to imagine workers in medical fields being similarly situated to where they are now, even if medical costs are controlled. The big part of our costs aren’t going to providers. Providers don’t get $600 for bandaids. Providers don’t get $45 for a Cialis tablet. Providers don’t earn millions of dollars as hospital administrators. Providers don’t earn the 15 to 20% of medical insurance premiums that goes to pay insurance company overhead.[/quote]Agree, SK, but you forgot to mention the hundreds of millions/billion(s)? in taxpayer funds that got sunk into the cost of setting up and operating the state and federal health exchanges under the ACA.
This “sunk expense” has all been wasted on unnecessary bureaucracy who mostly can’t find their way out of a brown paper bag, let alone be able to do their jobs and solve problems timely and competently. Add in the beefing up of bureaucrats at state and county Medicaid/Medi-Cal agencies, the beefing up (or soon-to-be “beefed up” . . . not sure this has happened yet, lol) IRS personnel to process all those tens of millions of (IRC) Forms 8962 and 1095A, B and C as well as millions of “12C letters” to taxpayers, all due to the ACA. Add in the beefing up of state AG’s offices in those states who opted in on “expanded Medicaid” (for the sole purpose of filing and collecting on “Estate Recovery” liens) and “We, the People” are now burdened with a healthcare industry which is a burgeoning behemoth of layers upon layers of additional bureaucracy with LESS providers to choose from than before the ACA! As a result of this colossal mess (the biggest mess this country’s leaders have ever made, IMO), the cash-rich biggest health insurers in the US have been sitting on the sidelines in many states and cherry-picking the states (one by one) which they decide they will dip their toes into the water in (for a year at a time) to see if it’s “financially feasible” for them to continue to sell policies there for the long haul. Alas, these little “experiments” conducted by Big Insurance (plus the numerous ill-fated “healthcare-cooperative” experiments) in the past ~4 years have not ended well thus far :=0
