Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/08/17/baby-docs.html
…
5 Likes
Given that the undergrad degree at NYU is $65,000 a year. Yeah. They wont be hurting.
I know this because it’s where my daughter is hoping to go next year.
7 Likes
The four lowest-paying specialties, all in pediatrics
Because the U.S. values its children. Just ask a teacher.
17 Likes
That’s because the patient mix for peds is far more Medicaid-centric than any other specialty, and Medicaid pays next to nothing for office visits.
4 Likes
This is a fine idea, but what we need is more doctors, and until the medical profession and Medicare loosen up their iron grip on the number of residency slots, we aren’t going to get any.
2 Likes
If NYU is like most universities with med schools, medical education is already being subsidized by undergraduate tuition.
4 Likes
The medical profession can certainly take some blame for gatekeeping here, for sure. Blaming Medicare is a completely disingenuous though. Medicare subsidizes residencies, the limits come from cuts to Medicare.
11 Likes
This is sorta right, there’s a lot more at play in terms of residency slots. That said, it’s also time that we put serious thought into a different pathway for getting family practice docs 3+3 accelerated programs are an ok start, but we need to get more creative.
Congress capped the number of Medicare subsidized residencies in 1997-98 and there have been a few added since, so it’s not really a cut. But neither Reps nor Dems have shown any inclination to increase that number any time since.
ok, Medicare scars then 
And yes, Democrats need to get their shit together around access to medicine. The base would certainly love for them to.
2 Likes
This is the natural complement to single-payer universal health insurance: subsidising medical education or making it free. Physicians and nurses should not have to worry about paying off crushing student debt in addition to practising medicine.
8 Likes
This will be a nice break for the highest category of earners in the United States, and one of the last categories still capable of repaying their student loans during their lifetime. How wonderful for them.
Yeah, I was kind of confused upon learning they make over $200,000 a year. Does some other compulsory expense use most of that up? I know medical professions pay a lot in malpractice insurance – is that’s what’s happening? Is insurance something doctors have to pay for personally rather than as a part of the office’s expenses?
Sure we value children. But we also value paying women less than men, or paying less for “women’s work” regardless of who is doing it.
1 Like
The AMA will have to come up with some other way of restricting the supply of médecins.
1 Like
I’m sure that mo’ money, mo’ problems is true for physicians. Nevertheless, they’re typically in the top ten percent of Americans in terms of wealth.
Maybe top earning, but that’s different than wealth. They also have to save some.
2 Likes
Or if you look at it in a different way, who is the more valuable mechanic, the one that works at the dealership only on new in warranty cars or the one that sees any make and model over 20 years old. I’d suspect a general physician sees more patients with more variance in issues that a peditrician does.
I don’t really have any more data than you, but both internists and pediatricians are going to see a huge amount of mundane things and a small amount of unusual/complicated issues – many of which will then be referred to specialists. For instance, most internists could just diagnose “overweight, high blood pressure, needs more exercise” without even looking and be right more than they are wrong. Also, FWIW, pediatric specialists also earn less than the equivalent adult medicine specialist. I think the medicaid explanation may be more likely to be a direct cause.
But that isn’t really the point. As far as I have heard from my doctor friends, the relative pay gap between pediatricians and internists has grown exactly as the field has switched from male dominated to female dominated. Whatever the justifications or technical contributions, this falls into the pattern of “jobs that become dominated by women we feel like we can value less” Maybe medicaid pays less, but my hypothesis is that if pediatrics were still male dominated, that would somehow change.
And yes, it is hard to feel to sorry for women earning $200k just because their male colleagues earn 30% more. But the point remains that the gender pay gap exists across almost the entire spectrum of jobs from low paying service jobs to CEOs.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
