Today, a typical primary care doctor must stay abreast of approximately 10,000 diseases and syndromes, 3,000 medications, and 1,100 laboratory tests [6]. Research librarians estimate that a physician in just one specialty, epidemiology, needs 21 hours of study per day just to stay current [7]. Faced with this flood of medical information, clinicians routinely fall behind, despite specialization and sub-specialization [8]. [/quote]
Reread that and let it sink in. That’s from a chapter in a book called “The 4th Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery”. If you doubt the sources, I can find the actual articles numbered in the quote and post the bibliography. I’d rather not have to, but its your call.
“medical men strive manfully to keep up their knowledge of how the world of medicine moves on; but too often they are the first to accuse themselves of being unable to meet the duties of their daily calling…Ã??Ã?¢?? He went on to say, Ã??Ã?¢??The preparatory work in the study of medicine is so great, if adequately done, that but few can spare time for its thorough performance…”
Dr. Henry Noyes said that…in 1865. If it was that bad then, imagine the rate now.
Regarding your curiosity about how much doctors make here vs other countries and how much they spend in school here vs. other countries, there’s nothing wrong with that. In Germany and a number of other countries ALL collegiate and medical school bills are funded by the government–that means it is free for students to study.
Here are the average numbers for the US medical school prices for the 2012-2013 year.
Average Private Med School tuition is $49,000 PER YEAR (The cheapest private school in the country was Baylor at a “paltry” $30,000 per year.)
Average Public Med School tuition for non-residents is about $3,600 MORE expensive per year (52,000+), and around half that for residents depending on school. For the First Year of med school. Remember it’s going to be at least 4 years.
Add on to that the cost of medical malpractice insurance, which ranges widely for states but for which the middle/median cost (state wise) is Pennsylvania–where your Insurance costs for general surgery practice will range from roughly $28,000-50,000 per year! Internal medicine practice is much lower in cost, but can still cost upwards of $20,000 per year in some states (Florida expects you to pay about $50,000 dollars), and Ob/gyn can cost as much as $64,000. These are all 2009 figures and they are all verifiable outside the source I linked (I’m not going to look up the scholarly articles, but they exist and if you really wanted to you could find them).
Sources: http://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/the-short-list-grad-school/articles/2013/05/14/10-private-medical-schools-with-the-lowest-price-tags
https://services.aamc.org/tsfreports/report.cfm?order_by=inst_lbl_name&year_of_study=2013&select_control=PUB
http://www.ehow.com/about_5514154_average-cost-medical-malpractice-insurance.html
However I think it abundantly clear from the above information about the workload we impose on our doctors that there is NO WAY a doctor spending the amount they have to in the states should see his salary decrease. We expect them to go into debt between $200,000-$400,000 for medical school, and then we expect them to a small working class or middle class salary for insurance every year.
Contrast this with Germany: University is damn near free–as of 2012 tuition is only required in 2 of the 16 states in Germany–the other 14 are state sponsored and free for students–and only costs 500 euros in those 2 states. Medical School is at University, so prices are one and the same for Germans. So, a German student will spend roughly 3,000 euros to undergo all of medical school.
If you have free education, then you can make a grand living on much less salary than if you go 200,000+ in debt and pay 30,000 per year in insurance. There is no freaking way I would ever support any policy or measure that had doctors making less money considering the facts above. The only way I would support a policy which resulted in lower wages for doctors here in the US is if the costs of education and medical insurace literally crashed into the ground–first. Not after we cut doctors pay, but before. [/quote]
As far as Germany is concerned they have some of the highest forms of government assistance but have not been greatly affected by the crash in the Eurozone. Especially compared to most of the other countries. This goes against conservative economics, just like the high cost of schooling and healthcare.
