The 'filthy rich doctors' explanation for high U.S. health care costs

well, when you figure in the fact that French doctors aren't a couple of hundred thou in debt before they hang out a shingle, don't have to pay high health insurance premiums for themselves or their employees, and probably don't have to pay for malpractice insurance, 55K is a pretty good average pay rate.

Boy, can you imagine the shortage of doctors (and nurses) in the US if we capped salaries at $55K? What would they start out, $35K?

And at what point do aspiring youth decide "Eh, it's not worth all the effort. I can just go to work at Starbucks part time and get free government health care."

Paying doctors less money is dangerous. Doctors go through medical school and residency, something that would frighten most people if they had to go through this to get a job. Doctors have a set of techincal skills that cannot be easily duplicated. They work extremely hard at learning extremely complex information. I think that it is irresponsible and ignorant to blame doctors themselves for the rise in health care costs. Many doctors put in more work in six months than most people do in a year. How much sense does it make to shortchange someone who is saving lives?

"Boy, can you imagine the shortage of doctors (and nurses) in the US if we capped salaries at $55K? What would they start out, $35K? "

Boy can you imagine what would happen if commenters actually read the post correctly, and noted that French GPs AVERAGED 55K/yr...

I mean, we might actually have the foundation for an intelligent discussion....

/Snark off

Many high risk specialties are underpaid. $195,000 a year may sound like a lot of money. But check out the recent top 50 multi-milltionare athletes. Many can barely read and write and what do they contribute to the well being of the public. Most doctors have to struggle to make the medium income. Long hours, huge overhead, and a monstrous staff chasing insurance carriers to get paid and prove medical necessity. The real criminal in the system is the insurance carriers who avoid/stall payment at every level of care. They control market pressures, limit access, and slow down the delivery system. We do not need a single payer system, we need a single administrated system and let the insurance companies compete for market share. Everyone has coverage, cut the paper chase/shuffling. Fine doctors and insurance companies that abuse their privileges.

Glen Rasmussen, you are correct.

I do not why people insist on blaming laborers (doctors) for problems that come from the corporations (insurance companies). People blaim gas station attendants for raising prices on gasoline. But they are not to blame. The petroleum companies are. The same goes with doctors. Doctors do not control the prices for their services. In order to make a living, they have to mark up prices because of equipment, drugs, insurance, and a bunch of other bureaucratic mess that is helping to destroy health care in the U.S.

"We do not need a single payer system, we need a single administrated system and let the insurance companies compete for market share."

Lets get a little more specific, Glen. Who is the single administrator? How does this entity ensure that everyone is covered? How do they set up this competition for market share?

"Why isn't young Klein concerned with why doctors are pretty much guaranteed to become millionaires in the US"

Funny, a conservative worried about someone making too much money? Free market, beh-beh!

I recently had this conversation with a friend of mine who is in medical school. We were discussing salary caps and how I feel that the salaries of doctors are outlandish and that salary caps for doctors didn't sound like a bad idea. She got pretty riled up and said that if doctors didn't get to look forward to all that money, then they would never become doctors in the first place. That - to me - is really interesting. I wasn't sure what I thought about it at first, and now I know I disagree. I recently finished law school (granted, not as ridiculously awful as medical school), and a lot of folks there felt the same way about possible caps on their own salaries as lawyers. It got me to thinking. It is those really greedy ones in both professions that give both professions a bad name. Plenty of people become doctors and then work in inner city hospitals or travel the world providing medical care in third world countries, doing good work for the sake of doing good work. Plenty of people become lawyers for the sake of helping people, and become public defenders or legal aid attorneys, and work just as hard for much less money than their corporate-whore counterparts. We should really look at the reality of this situation, and the level to which these 2 professions hold a monopoly on things that people desperately need access to. Because I don't tend to pander to greedy people, I would completely support capping salaries of doctors if it was part of a holistic re-imagining of how access to health care should work. This would have to include serious controls over: 1) what the pharmaceutical companies can do, how they can market, what they can charge; 2) costs of a medical education, so that students don't have to go thousands and thousands of dollars in debt just to get their training; 3) costs of insurance for doctors; and 4) costs of insurance for people, and availability of insurance for everyone. Without addressing these things as a whole, progress can't really be made, because these things are all elements of the same big problem. Simple/simplistic solutions are not going to work for our health care crisis, we need to really get creative and start challenging some of the traditions we take for granted, and holding our professionals to a higher degree of social responsibility.

I'm a lawyer. A couple of years ago I had a conversation with my kid's pediatrician. He observed that lawyers, on average, made only about 60-70% what doctors did and that the legal profession should limit the number of law school graduates the way the medical profession limited the number of medical school graduates. I thought it was an interesting conversation.

Seeing as how so many women (take me to task all you want but in general woman want to work fewer hours to spend time with family) have gone into medicine I think it would work just fine if:

-education was paid for
-35 hour work week
-6 weeks paid vacation
-rent stipend for expensive cities
-generous pension

But I don't think that's what the people suggesting this plan have in mind (but it is what they have in France). They want to cut doctors off at 55 or so k a year thinking that it will save money.

I know a good number of dedicated doctors who want nothing more than to do research and help, but taking a vow of poverty (55k in NYC?) isn't part of the plan.

One needs to be careful when painting with a broad brush. I am a forty year old physician who worked and borrowed my way through college and medical school. During school breaks, I did not travel to tropical beaches but worked to help off-set the cost of my education. When I finished my residency trianing at age 30 and was ready to enter practice, I was tens of thousands of dollars in debt with student loans.

I typically work about 60 hours a week and am likely to be awakened at 2:00 am when I am at home. I make a comfortable living but "millionaire" is nowhere in my future.

I've also heard that the average income for doctors varies wildly depending on their exact specialty/field.

I don't think pediatricians make that much.

I've also heard that the average income for doctors varies wildly depending on their exact specialty/field.

I don't think pediatricians make that much.

I don't know a lot of millionaire doctors either.
It is purely ignorance that speaks of such things. Given that many doctors spend between 11-15 years for college, medical school, residency, and fellowship training beyond a k-12 education, and many are in educational debt over 100,000 dollars to pay them 55k is beyond idiotic. Couple that with the tremendous responsibility that a doctor has, the stress, the need for continuing medical education, keeping the malpractice lawyers at bay, time lost from family to care for patients, paying higher and higher overhead, and oh by the way, dealing with ever decreasing reimbursements (not to mention all the free work that we do when patients cannot or will not pay) - for example, medicare reimbursements are to fall 10% in 2008, and another 30% (that's 40% people) by 2015, anyone who thinks that doctors should make that little money are simply ignorant. I wonder if people like this mind that the median salary for a NFL player is between 300,000 - 650,000 dollars a year. Or consider the amount of money that William McGuire, the CEO of United Health made in 2005 - 124.8 million dollars - and that's not counting his stock options.

Get some perspective. No one in their right mind would go into medical school for 50k. If you prefer non-American trained doctors taking care of you then this is the way to make that happen.

Again, the ignorance of Mr. Jones would be funny if not so sad.

Capping physician's salaries is the fastest way to dilute the talent pool among medical practitioners. Health care would be marginally cheaper, but it would be considerably less valuable.

Unless the government becomes the single payer for all of health care, there's no way to implement this anyway.

One wonders how much Fred Jones makes (or should make)....

If you were paid for ignorance then Fred Jones would be as rich as Warren Buffet.

Why is it sad that your blog was given print inches? Doctors are wallowing in cash, but they are in some ways, earning it. Long hours, weekend and holidays are all trashed. Why? American education sucks. Defense budget too big, education too small. Matter of fact, as much as we like to call them rifle droppers (WWII reference), and snotty, they have great ideas. They have a good education system and a good health care system, seems to me they got their priorities straight.
As far as doctors getting rich here, why aren't more people becoming doctors? Seems like that's a real lucrative job right now, except being a lobbyist might be easier

Why is it sad that your blog was given print inches? Doctors are wallowing in cash, but they are in some ways, earning it. Long hours, weekend and holidays are all trashed. Why? American education sucks. Defense budget too big, education too small. Matter of fact, as much as we like to call them rifle droppers (WWII reference), and snotty, they have great ideas. They have a good education system and a good health care system, seems to me they got their priorities straight.
As far as doctors getting rich here, why aren't more people becoming doctors? Seems like that's a real lucrative job right now, except being a lobbyist might be easier

artificial scarcity == cartel

supply of doctor is controlled at two points::
medical school class size + residency numbers

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-03-02-doctor-shortage_x.htm

pssble sln:
standardized national credentialing with open access to anyone willing to pay for cost of administration

(ie paying 100K+ tuition should not be req. for board exams... to put this in perspective, several top med schools do not offer examinations... students simply pay enormous tuition for the right to sit for the natl board exam?)

If there were a salary cap on doctors salary at 55k, they'd probably find themselves not able to afford malpractice insurance.

Which would be fine, because at 55k per year, it wouldn't be worth the time or money for a lawsuit.

I am married to a doctor and we are far from rich. That is all I have to say.

It's interesting to me that these doctors who cry about having thousands of dollars in education loans to pay off and are pleading poverty can still manager to own two or more homes, travel the globe, take weeks of vacation time and still run a thriving practice. No wonder you can never see the doctor! Hum, who's really running the doctor's practice and earning these inflated salaries for the doctors, the PA's!!
My point, you're still millionaires, maybe not liquid, but on paper. Boo-hoo!!!

Think about how many what kind of culture surrounds an "elite" tier of doctors. Creating a higher social class for doctors produces detachment from the people they serve, and when money becomes the issue, basic services like health care that are so intimately linked to the human experience become commodified, which is dangerous. I can't tell you how many doctors i've seen that are greedy, and self absorbed to the point that it becomes anti-social. There is a problem in giving doctors more money than anyone should be able to live off of. Cap the wage!!

If we cap doctors salaries, lets cap every other profession. The beaurocrats can have a field day calculating the degree of complexity each profession has, the number of hours each profession puts in, educational costs, insurance cost, what age you begin to start earning a salary. When all the rocket scientists put this data into a computer, A teacher will make 5000 dollars a year, garbage collectors 1100 dollars a year, politicans, 12000 dollars a year, chemists, 7000 dollars a year, stars buck worker, 450 dollars a year, stock market analyst 15000 a year and oh yes a doctor, who puts in 13 years of education, additional 2 years of post graduate specialy study making it a total of 15 years, so they are the average 30 years old before they can find work, not to memtion, malpractice insurance, medical education at 45 thousand dollars a year, lets cap him, well that will make his.her salary around 18000 dollars a year. Lets have the liberal domocrats ruin what little remains of the Health Care System. and punish those who save lives, who work all kinds of hours,and most have failed marriages, so it a great idea, lets bring down the big bad rich doctors, they are the ones who are costing health care to rise, Really? Come on people, get real, those insurance carriers dictate when how, who and where the monies go, if it gets to the right place. They are cash rich and getting more powerful. What is it with these left wing liberal domoncrats ideology of social national reform.

For all the talk about the US being a 'free' market society, there is very little of it in the realm of professional medical compensation.

I ask you, "Why pay an MD in the US on average 194K when you can get an equally qualified MD from India, China or Eastern Europe at half that amount?".

It makes no sense to me at all. Britain imports tens of thousands of medical professional from India to fill it's dwindling ranks within it NHS.

The Amercian Medical Association (AMA), through its lobbying of congress and its complex accreditation process is keeping doctors pay far more than it should be.

Bring in 100,000 doctors from India, China, Eastern Europe, Brazil, Central America and medical costs will drop almost over night.

Let's see for how long you will be able to deplete those countries of their bright and able. By importing doctors and increasing their income you will still bring those motivated by greed alone, since I am sure their own people need doctors.

"Why pay an MD in the US on average 194K when you can get an EQUALLY QUALIFIED MD from India, China or Eastern Europe"

LOL!!!

I am an aspiring MD and for all the work that I'll have to put in over the next decade, I think docs deserve atleast 200k per year, at least the good ones.

Do we pay doctors too much?

Americans are struggling with health care expenses and I’m one of them. I am a Physician.
Physician salaries in the US are higher compared to Europe and Canada because of a difference in work ethic. The French are beginning to realize that they have a serious “socialization” problem. French doctors take 10 to12 weeks of vacation per year. I haven’t taken that much time off in the last 3 to 4 years. British doctors often quit working for afternoon “Tea”. It’s a fact that foreign doctors are not as productive. I put in 12 hour plus days for weeks at a time. I do health screenings and health fairs during weekends and evenings off. I “squeeze” surgeries in on my afternoons off. I attend numerous volunteer meetings during my work days. My partners volunteer at the City Free Clinic, and we rotate through the Free Clinic at GMH.
If I’m sick, I want the brightest, most skilled people in the country to take care of me. My medical training was 13 years of higher education. (There went my 20’s.) What’s it worth to Americans to have highly trained individuals care for their health? If you want to pay Physicians minimum wage, then the brightest and smartest in America are not going to go into medicine, simply, because they are the brightest and smartest. It will only weaken our health system. Then we can outsource health care to foreign medical graduates, requiring a translator to communicate, in English, with your physician. Pay me like the French, and then I’ll start taking my 12 weeks vacation. I did not go into medicine only for the money, I like what I do, I took an oath, and I have 3 decades in medicine.
Yes doctors are paid for procedures. Similar to how a mechanic charges for automotive repair. It’s like being an auto mechanic that gets a flat fee for fixing the problem regardless of what is necessary to correct it. And then for 90 days you give free alignments, oil changes, and wash and waxes. You work on cars, but you can’t sell cars, or gas, oil, or parts, and you have to send them out to diagnose the problem. Then you train to repair the newest models, at your expense. And if the car isn’t better than it was before, they blame you. The human body is not a car.
Physicians are limited by regulations and reimbursements for test and procedures they perform and interpret. We limit tests and treatments we provide because reimbursements are less than our costs. And you seem to think we order test unnecessarily to “pad” our incomes. That is simply not true for any ethical physician. In fact, because we do not order tests needlessly we struggle to pay expenses, maintenance, and payments on expensive equipment. And this equipment is vital to our group in providing timely, convenient, and accurate treatment of our patients, making us More Productive! Of course the insurance companies and Medicare want to further cut reimbursements for these procedures making it harder to pay the “bill” on these diagnostic tools. The insurance industry is the only industry that continued to be profitable during the most recent economic down turns this decade. You want to cut salaries? CEO’s of the Top Ten US insurance companies made a combined $76.6 million, while those company’s profits totaled $25.2 Billion in 2003 (Forbes.com) William McGuire, the CEO of United Health made in 2005 - 124.8 million dollars - and that's not counting his stock options.
Medicine is one of the most highly regulated industries in the US. It’s not a free market system! Complying with rules and regulations alone drive up the cost of health care. Federal law mandates that any Physician in the US, at their expense, must provide a translator for any non-English speaking patient. Do you think they do that in France or Mexico? The free care we provide is not insignificant. And you know we still have to pay the bills even if we don’t collect on services rendered. We still have all the legal liability associated with patient care regardless of weather we collect payment or not. Also our malpractice premiums have tripled in the last 5 years. Let the federal government and Hillary manage health care!? The VA system and the health care of our injured troops, these are two shining examples of how the government will manage our health care. Just ask any Vet!
The US now has about 800,000 active physicians, and there is predicted to be a shortage. Annual health care costs may be 4 trillion dollars in another decade. Physicians are in the highest tax bracket with 50% of our income going to taxes, and you think we all make $300,000 plus per year. The average internist makes about $150,000 per year. But say at $300,000 we cut physician salaries in half then they will be getting $150,000 per year. Take home pay of $75,000! Britney Spears makes $700,000 per month. I may do better as an entertainer! And actually may get more free time.
Contrary to what you think, American Physicians are the greatest in the world. We do not control the prices!! To balance the health care budget on our back is only going to hurt health care more. We do not just “check feet and eyes” we do inform patients what is good for their health. I can’t make sure that a patient “goes out and exercises”. The average American has no clue about their body and how it works. Most take better care of their car than themselves. I’ll be more than happy to take care of you when you have an illness but don’t get mad at me when you’re sick. This is a complex issue and I don’t have all the answers but I do have a better perspective. And please don’t get me started on smoking!!!

Sincerely,

J. David Rice, M.D.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_28/b4042070.htm
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2007/03/french_health_c.html

To better appreciate how doctors are doing financially one should look at median salaries (that is the salary at which 50% of doctors make less and 50% make more). Some doctors with very large salaries can skew the average. Certain specialist make salaries 2X more on average than other specialities. I am a physicain, very few of my close colleagues are millionares (if any). Yet a number of my colleagues have left the practice of medicine because of financial problems(instead working for drug companies etc were they get much better salaries and benefits with less hours of work).

To get a more realistic picture of how doctors fare compared to the average worker one would have to standardize salary per hours worked. The average salary is based on a 40-50 hour work week. The average doctor works considerably more hours per week than that.

We cannot compare the US system to the european system. To many fundamental differences exist.
We do not cap cost of groceries or water. These are more fundamental then healthcare. Further, cosmetic medicine and dentistry are flourishing in this country. In these specialties the consumer must pay cash (or the equivalent) up front and there is no insurance. How is it that the public can afford these expensive optional medical services but can't afford the neccessary medical services. The problem is not one of affordability. It's who is paying and what the public values most.

If society continues to devalue good medical care then the service itself will be devalued. Ultimately, that will mean a different standard of care for all of us.

Is this what society really wants?

I'm a software developer, I have to compete with people all over the world to keep my job because it could in time be outsourced to India or China.

Nobody has given me a valid reason why doctors in the US are payed 5 times more than doctors anywhere else in the developed world. Other than the line, "we have 100K in student debt", lots of students in the US are strapped with debt or "we pay high insurance premiums", shouldn't the insurance companies take care of that?

Sure, heart, brain and so on surgeons, pay them a million bucks, they deserve it. All those other doctors who do nothing more than see 50 patients a day and prescribe medicines; pay them 300K/annum, for !@#$#!# sakes!

I say do what they do in Britain, import doctors from India, China and the developing world at large and you will see medical costs go down across to board. Make it easier for these doctors to practice in the US by breaking down the 'fortress' US mentality of the AMA that makes it very difficult for foreign doctors to practice in the US.

The practice of bringing in foreign nurses to fill the ranks of US nurses has been going for quite some time. Why not other health care workers? Let the market determine what doctor's salaries should actually be.

Correction:
"we pay high insurance premiums", shouldn't the insurance companies take care of that?

I meant the HMO's and by de facto, the consumer, should take care of that.

"In a 2003 study Baker, who is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, estimates that by adding roughly 100,000 physicians to our current pool of about 760,000, we could pull doctors’ salaries down from an average of $203,000 to somewhere between $74,000 and $126,000. For the average middle-class American family of four he reckons that would lead to savings of $2,200 to $3,700 per year"

many pediatricians are not making 195k.
Some don't make over 100k when it is all said and done, and if they went to an out of state school for undergrad and medical school and borrowed the whole way, they could be up to200k in debt, and they won't be making very much in residency.

Doctors are pretty much responsible for their own retirement funds.

What are the CEOs of insurance companies making? Are they as helpful as a doctor?

It's funny to hear people with 4 year degrees in business talking about how doctors make too much money. Please, try to get through 4 years of premed, and hope you earned good enough grades to get into medical school, then get through 4 years of medical school. Also keep in mind that doctors don't get their first paycheck until they are 26, at which time they are working 70-80 hour weeks and making under 50k a year. So that's like 25k for a 40 hr job, but they work double.

in addition, a lot of non physician jobs come with perks, like stock options, 401k plans, insurance and paid vacation. Private practice doctors don't get these things. Just please realize that this shouldn't be oversimplified.

My family doctor works more hours than my father, is a single mother, and makes about $120k while my father has a 4 year degree and makes $250k plus stock options, retirement plan, insurance, and over 30 days of vacation.

"It's funny to hear people with 4 year degrees"...
A common theme among doctors and med school students etc. I have the marks, I got through premed, I got into a med school, I must be brilliant! Give me a break, where're not in school anymore boys and girls. Come to Stanford, check out all the IT and biotech startups in the bay area and you'll see what brilliant really is. Just think how much the high cost of health care is a crushing burden on our most promising companies. Rather than investing and developing in new and innovative products, companies find themselves in the position of blowing more and more of their bottom line into their employee's health care costs.

All I'm saying is let the free market rule. And labor costs are a huge part of properly functioning free market. No more 'managed' professions. It's anti-free market, it's anti-american.

Shawn, this isn't supposed to be about who is the most brilliant. I think that's generally what the Nobel Prize Committee is for.

Are you saying that doctors should be capped or not capped? If it's free market, then I assume you are trying to say that let's keep things private, let doctors set their own pay and let's not force companies to provide health care. Please correct me if I'm not following you correctly.

Why should US doctors make $195,000 a year?

Here are several reasons :
1.) You should receive fair compensation for the amount of schooling that you undertake. For example, a starting salary for an engineer who goes through 4 years of college is $50,000. A doctor goes through 4 years of college, 4 years of medical school, and an additional 3-7 years of residency. That equals anywhere from 11-15 years of schooling. A doctor should make 3 to 4x as much as engineer because he/she has been in schooling 3 to 4x as long.
2.) After finishing schooling, doctors owe up to $200,000 in debt. If you put doctor's salaries at $55,000, nobody is going to want to become a doctor knowing that when you finish you are not going to pay off all your loans. So this country will run into a huge shortage of doctors. Someone in the previous comments suggested that we could import cheaper doctors from India, kinda like when you call for technical support and it is some guy from India. Now do you really want some doctor from India taking care of your ill mom??

Well said, George. However, I'm okay with a doctor from India taking care of someone in my family. There are many Indian doctors already in the USA. But yes, the point is that we could import lots of doctors that would be willing to work for less because they might have less debt and might want to live in the USA. However, we don't do that.

In general, healthcare is probably too expensive, but cost is not just because of doctor's salaries. If your surgery costs 25k, that isn't going into the surgeons pocket. Rather, the surgeon is probably making something more like $800 a day and the rest of the money goes elsewhere. It's sort of small minded for people to think that if we cap doctor's pay, we will be closer to solving the problem. This being said, I'm considering going overseas, but just as a personal choice. However, socialized medicine doesn't cap every specialty from my understanding. For example, elective procedures.

All I can say is: if you think it's so easy getting into medical school, making it through medical school and residency, and being an overpaid doctor, then try to be one yourself! At least that way you can help contribute to helping others and stop complaining!!!

It's ridiculous that athletes and rappers make tens of millions when they can hardly read or write. And somehow they're considered a "hero" and suddenly they're perspective on world peace or something is so profound. Shows where our priorities as a society are!!!!

Wow...

I am from Canada and have to say it is depressing reading these Posts!

Sadly there are serious issues in Health Care that need to be addressed in both Canada and the US. I have taken a personal interest in this as I had a trigger point happen where I seen a young man the same age as myself end up sitting beside me in the emergency waiting room one night for 20 minutes of the last hour of his life.

He was the same age as me, and it places me in tears to think that this man may have a young family like my own. The Triage Nurse was totally aware that this could be serious but there must not have been room. In Canada it is not unusual to wait 6 hours for a doctor in emergency, or 6 months for a MRI but wonderful it’s free!

I am in a unique position as I built a corporation that now runs without myself having to be present. So since I have time, the ability to help and most important love people and that includes doctors; I want to help make a difference.

I contacted Patch Adams MD (www.patchadams.org), and Patch has been extremely helpful on the journey of understanding the problems and solutions, I have attended a Health Care Intensive put on by a School of Designing a Society in Urbana, Illinois which was an excellent experience. Patch helps health professionals understand just how they can work on releasing the obsessive behavior and find fulfillment in truly caring for those they are treating.

If you are a health care professional you should take the time to go to one of these intensives. Check Patch’s website (www.patchadams.org), you will be amazed with what you can learn. And it’s not about capping a salary or turning everyone into monks, it’s about compassion and balance.

It bothers me to hear doctors comparing themselves to some pro-baseball player or superstar. We are certainly not talking apples to apples. I was given an example by a lawyer friend (and excuse me on the preciseness I am not a sports buff) he stated that someone comparing themselves to a professional Picher in wage is ridiculous because their actual abilities are amazing rare. In many cases there are very few like only five for example in the entire world that can throw a curve ball at 95 miles an hour across home plate.

A trained doctor is not someone who has trained for years and then takes the risk of finding out are they now a Superstar. Superstar are rare, same with extremely successful entrepreneurs and just about any other competitive profession that makes big dollars; for every Superstar there are hundreds of thousands of others who have attempted the same thing but did not achieve the status.

Now doctors are incredibly smart people that have spent years of dedication to get to where they are, and I truly respect these individuals.

Doctor bashing and wage capping is not getting us any where. We need to care about each other and work together. The superstar syndrome is arrogance and if it keeps up the Pharmaceutical companies are going to invent a pill for it and make another billion. LOL

The protection of an industry from competition is never good though, if one looks at long distance telephone service and where things are today you can truly see what competition does. In the US you have the Sherman Antitrust Act to stop one organization from ruling a sector but I am not seeing it being utilized.

To eradicate small pox children were sent with barbed needles to vaccinate people. The reason for this is they were rather simply the quickest on their feet (common sense). Today I believe people have to see a nurse or doctor to get a needle vaccination while I am certain others could be easily trained.

This is an example of how one could utilize a service provided by someone with simple training but based on a protected industry can not happen. The doctors who protect the industry will talk of all the horrible things that can happen if a needle is given incorrectly and the doctors who care about people will tell you yes that makes perfect sense and is attainable.

A doctor is a highly educated person and should be utilized for their abilities. I have computer programmed since I was 12 years old today I am 40. When I look at technology and where it has taken us it is amazing but in the doctor industry it has had a backwards effect.

For example a GP in Canada today takes 9+ years education, not certain on the specific breakdown but I believe approximately 15 years ago it was 6 years education. So with any other industry computers have made us more efficient yet with a doctor it has been opposite more education and more costs. (many variables that caused this)

I can tell you that people who personally know me in the industry related to technology would say I am rather intelligent. I can tell you if I am working on various intense software programming projects over a five year term and then turn and look at some code I wrote six years ago it is like I had not even written it. Yet a Radiologist may end up in school for 13+ years to read a MRI, makes absolutely no sense to me.

I had a friend with prostate cancer tell me it was going to be 2 weeks to get a CAT Scan to determine the size of his prostate so his doctor could provide him with the correct procedure. Does it take someone 13+ years to read the image to figure out how large a prostate is? It’s no magic the answer is simply no, and had someone been given for example two years training on simply looking at prostates on a CAT Scan and this is all they did, they would actually exceed a Radiologist with 13+ years education at diagnosing issues with a prostate.

Then I am told what if the cancer spread, you would not pickup on this.

I can tell you there are solutions if we constructively sit down and work on how to more effectively achieve the tasks at hand. This would make a more affordable health care system that would still require some highly educated well paid doctors.

I am personally working on this type of solution and require the help of doctors to achieve this. If you are medical professional and wish to help, let me know. My email address is Dean(aatt)ShockWare.com.

I am a software engineer and my job gets exported to India and China, but I still make 10x more money than they make there. If outsourcing was the solution to all the problems, things would have been simple. We can get basically live of China and India.

Grow up, realize what you want. If you are not ready to pay for a service, the quality and drive from intellectuals will decline. People with socialist mindset would argue otherwise and would often come up with thousands of reasons of how Russia fell, Cuba has not progressed from 1970 or how China runs its new communist society(for those who dont know it is capitalism there)

If people are expecting to cap, so be it. But beware of what quality of service you may get.

Eventhough, my job (software) gets exported, I still way more than engineers there. why? not because my multinational company cant afford or has no offices. but because they expect higher and more productive work from me.

Jose Padilla is correct. There should be cap on physician's pay.

Today, I saw MSNBC episode on how much each prostitute makes. An average prostitute makes about $1000 to $2000 / day. Mind you, this is all tax free money. I think the govt. should also place cap on this money, especially tax free money.

If a doc after studying for so many years should get the salary capped at 55K, i think at the very least prostitute's pay should be capped at 200K