<p>Hi,</p>
<p>With inevitable pay cuts looming in the future, stronger barriers to entry may drive pay back up to current levels. How can doctors have even stronger barriers to entry? Harder MCAT and USMLE's?</p>
<p>Artificially keeping the number of physicians low to maintain high salaries in the face of looming physician shortages seems like a fantastic idea to me.</p>
<p>They all have to pay student loans and mulpractice insurance. Many said that they will retire earlier. With National Health care, they will not be able to stay in business. So, here you go, number of MDs will go down, no need for artificial measures. However, the care will be rationed with many more resulting deaths, so the number of sick will go down also. And people from other countries will stop coming. So, less MDs, less sick and lessened life expectancy.</p>
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<p>Sounds like a very well-thought-out healthcare plan. Go U-S-A.</p>
<p>I’m moving to Peru, where my current salary would pay off a doctor’s student loans and where being a medical student means I “am a doctor here”…</p>
<p>Your personal plan of moving to Peru has so many flaws, it will work for you for one week or so, no Americans would be able to live in Peru for starters…</p>
<p>“Sounds like a very well-thought-out healthcare plan.” - It is NOT thought-out plan, it is real life situations in countries with government run health care. The groups at most risk are elderly and infants, even healthy ones. I can provide personal examples. It has been planned for us by our government, some people loved it and most not, but nobody cared, it is the way of our future.</p>
<p>^lol… 'twas a joke. Take it as one.</p>
<p>That being said, why would you say “no Americans would be able to live in Peru for starters”? The fact is that plenty of American citizens live abroad (incl. in places like Peru). If you mean in terms of the cultural and language barriers and/or difference in way of life (i.e., lower standard of living, etc.), I’d call those things an advantage. I love it down there. The way of life is simpler and the people are generally much more amicable. The culture is astounding by comparison to our own. (I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Latin and South America and I really like it.)</p>
<p>Or by this, do you mean the law would, in some way, prevent Americans from moving abroad? I have not heard of such a clause, although I suppose it could exist. If that is the case, perhaps we are moving in an even worse direction than I had thought.</p>
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Yeah, this makes sense (I’ll actually insert a little caveat here that this sentence = extremely sarcastic, since you failed to pick up on the overt sarcasm in the previous post).</p>
<p>How do you know what I pick up and what I did not? </p>
<p>And yes, I know some people live abroad, having thier income from USA and even local servants. Most of them retire, some were fortunate to get awesome positions with foreign companies. I was talking about average person in average situation who decided to live in a country like Peru. I was not talking about celebrity living in Paris or London. If apumic has celebrity status and their resources, I apologize, other than that joking about leaving USA to live in Peru or Russia or Mexico or… is a very sad joke and should be dismantled as such. </p>
<p>Going back to future Health care in this country and proffessional prospects of MD’s, there is nothing good about it. Yes, doctor’s numbers will go down as well as number of sick because of higher mortality rate of infants and earlier deaths of elderly. Again, it is not my plan, it is our government plan, the government that will never have the same health care as the rest of USA citizens, oh no, they deserve much better than that.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>This is ridiculous. If more eldarly and infants are dying, wouldnt consumer advocate groups lobby congress hardball for higher physician pay to induce more people into becoming doctors?</p>
<p>^ You are way too naive if you believe in what you said.
I did not say “dying”, I said it would happen as result of new Health Care bill, which is not in effect yet but will be in few years. Yes, it was a point in time when we have made decision, but it involved completely different procedure than in your post #9. Obama promised government run Health Care and people voted him into office. That was the time when decision was made to go for new government run Health Care, it is too late now.</p>
<p>When there are a severe shortage of doctors and and influx of new patients, more patients will slip through the crack. More people die a preventable death. That seems to be the inevitable situation in a few years.</p>
<p>Now i call those deaths “people dying.” Do you not agree?</p>
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<p>Sure, but those new doctors will be government employees as the feds takeover health care. Most likely, we will evolve into a Canadian-style system (whose costs are soaring as well).</p>
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<p>Actually, there are more than enough people who want to be physicians. In developed countries with universal healthcare, there is actually a higher physician/population ratio than in the US.</p>
<p>The reason we even have a shortage is because there were too many barriers to entry already. You can thank the AMA for that. They have done everything possible to limit the number of physicians in the US. That’s the cause of our shortage. Despite all the hoopla about physician pay decreasing or malpractice or med school loans and doctors threatening to quit, those aren’t the reason why we don’t have more doctors today.</p>
<p>jasonInNy,
Correct, I disagree. I am talking about future of Health care and no need for artificial barriers because they have been covered in this bill. And most people will fall thru because more procedures will have no coverage because of government restrictions specifically for non-productive resources (infants, elderly and terminally ill - again determined by government agencies). That is how gov. run Health Care works everywhere and that is how it will work here. It is happenning already to Medicare and Medicaid recipients, do not need to go beyond border. Talk to people, observe, be open, theoretical abstract analysis most time do not reflect reality.</p>
<p>Some im just saying, how can doctors FURTHER increase their pay to compensate for the government medicare cuts by decreasing membership?</p>
<p>How feasible would this be? I mean if public opinion severely turns against doctors that might be a problem.</p>
<p>Jason:</p>
<p>It’s not feasible. Public opinion has already turned: we voted for the guy who admitted that he wanted to spread around the “wealth”, and since docs have wealth… :)</p>
<p>The number will go down, but the pay will not increase, that is what I am saying based on current events. This is reality. However, the job will be there for MD, which is not the case for most of us. Job security is one of the reasons in addition to all high moral goals to be in medicine, in any medically related proffession.</p>
<p>Jason</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone who has either taken (or in the case of those prepping now like my son and about to take the Step 1 USMLE) would wish a harder test on anyone.</p>
<p>Most docs will just stop taking government run insurance. For example, one of the places that the health care bill slashes reimbursements is for dermatologists. However, most dermatologists in my area don’t even take government-insurance, its all cash OR really good private insurance, so they won’t even be affected by it. </p>
<p>(most of my family’s friends are dermtologists- we know like 17 in our area, only 2 use government run insurance, the rest take cash and really good private insurance)—most make around 200-250K a year.</p>
<p>Cut subsidies to corn and beef. Prices for those products (especially corn syrup) will rise in comparison to healthier options, and people will self-select for a healthier diet. Then obesity rates might level off.</p>