That’s what I mean. Right now the country’s elites aren’t affected by it and can ignore it, but in a decade (give or take) the demographics will align in an inexorable way that will make the problems impossible to deny.
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Yes, I know this from the real world.
I do have a friend who got out of med school not too long ago and has this debt load. I’m guessing he’s not uncommon.
As someone who has “decent” insurance through my husband’s job… this is entirely the case, I think. We pay more out of pocket for more services now than we did 15 years ago. We’ve had to pay out of pocket to our deductible for stuff that should be considered preventative care (a second mammogram a few years ago, for example, came partial out of pocket). We’re lucky that we can eat the costs. That might not always be the case if we keep paying more and our deductibles keep getting larger and if what is covered keeps shrinking.
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We just returned from a trip to Cuba where doctors make an average of $70 per month. Yes - that’s per month. Yet, this is still 3x the average wage.
I don’t have the time or space to go into the various differences between their healthcare system and ours but the fact that I paid our cab driver for one day’s work about the same as his local doctor’s monthly salary is shocking.
Now Cuba is a communist country with free healthcare, free education, subsidized housing, state owned resources, etc, etc…but still their healthcare system is world renowned - we’re not talking witch doctors here but actual highly trained, western healthcare professionals.
There has to be a middle ground between BMW 7-series in the driveway vs. pennies per day salaries.
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Also, the Cubans often send their doctors to be on the frontlines of any number of disasters. There are plenty of things to criticize about Cuba, but they have great medical care, from what I’ve heard.
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I’m fine with teachers making seventy large. But unlike @Mal_Tosevite, I’m not going to imply that ED nurses are overpaid.
Lots of political talk about coverage and preexisting conditions and monthly premiums and copays.
Not much talk about what’s going to happen when we start seriously running out of doctors.
Here’s one thing that I found incredibly interesting during our visit there…doctors are assigned to each city neighborhood and/or their local town or village and are responsible for watching over and providing primary care for up to approx 200 people. Their houses are marked so that everyone knows where their local doctor is and they are required to go out and make regular house calls to assess their patients’ conditions. Like the neighborhood beat cop, doctors have intimate knowledge of their immediate area and the various health issues of their patients with a focus on preventative care. That’s just part of their day to day job.
Doctors are also not put on pedestals and treated as god-like figures like it sometimes happens here. They are workers just like the guys in the field or in the factory. It’s hard for somebody used to our system to really fathom the fundamental differences in their approach to healthcare.
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As @docosc has noted, it’s hard work that deserves a good living - but we’re talking about fields that don’t function well under a for profit system (education and health care). We need to pay people well in order to ensure they can do their jobs. it’s true across the board, but especially in these critical fields.
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That’s what happens when one party in a duopoly system refuses to see the basic common sense of having a single-payer (or at least highly regulated) universal system. Just about every other country in the civilised world has gotten beyond that decades ago, mainly through political will that re-defined affordable access to medical care as as basic right of citizens.
That can be addressed to an extent by government subsidies for medical education and by getting immigrant physicians and nurses U.S.-certified starting as soon as they arrive in the country instead of letting them languish for years in non-medical jobs (and, if need be, subsidise that, too).
Those are political issues as well, because most conservatives can’t stomach the first idea and, in the case of the second, the Know-Nothing base doesn’t want some furrin doctor “taking the place” of Joe T. Plumber, Jr., future MD (“Murican Doctor”).
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I agree, but I don’t think that we can take serious amounts of cost out of health care, while still providing as much care as we do today (ro more) without a lot of people in the $50-$100K range taking major pay cuts. It’s a decision that will have to be made one way or another.
That explains why conservatives aren’t coming up with plans to address the doctor shortage. It does not explain why liberals aren’t, either. The slickest medicare for all plan ever devised won’t help much when we have two-thirds the number of docs we do today.
There are many, many other things that should be cut before we start cutting labor. Labor is always first on the table, and that’s how you get disgruntled workers who aren’t going to do their best work. Plus, you’re going to cut the number of people who can go into the field, because they can’t afford to do so. You’re going to exacerbate the shortage that already exists of people who are working in this field, because who can afford $300K in student debt except the very rich.
So, no, we don’t necessarily have to cut labor costs as the FIRST LINE of changes in remaking health care. Get the private insurers out, or at the very least regulate them heavily. Negotiate with drug companies to drive down drug costs. Make sure that access to medical school is driven down so that we can get more doctors and nurses out there. There are many things we can do to cut costs that don’t make being a doctor a starvation wage job.
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I just suggested two approaches made by liberals and progressives (other than myself, but thanks for flattering me by assuming they’re my own ideas). For example, here’s Sanders discussing one of those approaches as a way to attract more doctors to primary care (which, as @docosc implies, is a major part of the problem):
https://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/primary-care-crisis-in-america
The problem is not a lack of solutions coming from liberals and progressives (and from non-partisan members of what Rove famously called “the reality based community”). The problem is an American conservative culture that prioritises corporate profits and racism over a healthy citizenry.
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Also make it possible to complete their school/training without being massively in debt.
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But the only real morality is the one shaped by the market! Everyone knows that! The rich are rich because they deserve to be rich and the poor are poor because they deserve it! EVERYONE WINS!!! /s
But seriously, health care is a human right, just like eating, having a roof over one’s head, and having freedom of speech, movement, and religion.
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Yep, which I noted. The student debt problem is triple or more in the medical field.
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It will spread beyond the current situation where the poor are left to die, to a situation where all of the non-rich are left to die.
So long as the rich are not personally endangered, the situation will continue.
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