Also because of massive student-debt loads - the average GP came out with like $250k even a few years ago. Someone's gotta pay that, and ultimately it's the patients.
The US medical system is so fucked it's almost hard to narrow it down to specific reasons: essentially it's at the nexus of the symptoms of virtually every crisis-of-capitalism that the US has allowed to fester over the last 70 years. Patents, education, insurance/financialization, employer-labor relations, federalism-induced complexity from state-level rulemaking (and racing to the bottom when that doesn't happen), racial bias to outcomes... I'm sure there's tons that I'm forgetting offhand.
Basically name a high-level problem/trend in american society and you can almost 100% certainly come up with a reasonable thesis for how that problem is making the american medical system worse.
similarly, name a group of powerful stakeholders and you can be sure that reform of the system will probably impact them negatively on a personal/financial level. Seniors? Investors? Doctors? Universities? etc etc.
to me it is without a doubt the single most politically-complex and personally-charged issue in the entire US system and that's really saying something.
> Also because of massive student-debt loads - the average GP came out with like $250k even a few years ago. Someone's gotta pay that, and ultimately it's the patients.
I doubt that's the reason for high doctor wages. They will keep making a huge buck even if tuition is cut by 80% imo. The reason I'm saying this is that the market doesn't care how much debt you have from school: you can pay Harvard 240K to get an art degree, that's not going to make anyone pay you what doctors are earning. You can become unemployed with big debt as you graduate.
The US medical system is so fucked it's almost hard to narrow it down to specific reasons: essentially it's at the nexus of the symptoms of virtually every crisis-of-capitalism that the US has allowed to fester over the last 70 years. Patents, education, insurance/financialization, employer-labor relations, federalism-induced complexity from state-level rulemaking (and racing to the bottom when that doesn't happen), racial bias to outcomes... I'm sure there's tons that I'm forgetting offhand.
Basically name a high-level problem/trend in american society and you can almost 100% certainly come up with a reasonable thesis for how that problem is making the american medical system worse.
similarly, name a group of powerful stakeholders and you can be sure that reform of the system will probably impact them negatively on a personal/financial level. Seniors? Investors? Doctors? Universities? etc etc.
to me it is without a doubt the single most politically-complex and personally-charged issue in the entire US system and that's really saying something.