Would we have more doctors if we (taxpayers) comp'ed medical school?

[AreaCode707]

No firsthand knowledge here, so correct away if I misspeak.

Getting into med school is pretty difficult, I understand. Paying for medical school requires hundreds of thousands in loans. Post-medical school involves residencies where you work tons of lousy hours for mediocre pay. After that you start your own practice and charge a lot to (a) make up for your school bills and (b) make the whole ordeal worth your while. People complain because you charge a lot and because all the other trappings of the medical profession (meds, equipment, facilities) are expensive and there are some oddball ways of weighing charges for different people.

Fairly accurate?

So how much would this, in your opinion, be alleviated, if med school costs were paid by the taxypayers? Are we already sourcing out nearly out all of the competent and motivated students, so that paying for med school really wouldn't add any new doctors to the pool? Or do we have a lot of competent and motivated students who would go to med school but can't get loans or pay for it?

I'm about as anti-socialized health care as anybody can get. However, if the government was going to step in anywhere to affect costs, it seems like subsidizing doctor (and other medical, like nurse, techs, etc.) education might be a fairly non-invasive way to start. You might wind up with a few more of the legendary "goodwill" doctors that the left hypothesizes about; people that want to be in medicine for the change the can make in the world and not just the money they can make.

I dunno, good or terrible idea?

[edit] My conclusions so far based on input from others in the thread: comping medical school wouldn't help much because we already turn away qualified and willing applicants (who can and will take on the loans) due to our limited med school space.

 

[MotF Bane]

Yay, more taxes.

 

[AreaCode707]

Originally posted by: MotF Bane
Yay, more taxes.

Believe me, I'm not advocating for that (household income right now puts us smack dab on the low end of the "you're getting screwed!" register). Or for this idea really. It's just a hypothetical question.

Let's put it this way. If we comped med school for doctors, would there be more doctors available to take low-cost patients, reducing the meed for government-funded healthcare? Cheaper and fewer taxes?

 

[racolvin]

I don't know that I'd be interested in paying for their schooling right off. You have no guarantee they'd graduate with decent grades, or in fact graduate at all.

Now what I would consider would be to forgive their student loans if they agree to work as an internist/family doctor for 5-7 years. As a country we're WAY short of family doctors - to many of them want to be heart surgeons and such.

 

[StageLeft]

I don't believe many people don't do medical school because of the costs. We could see more doctors by opening more schools and/or lowering standards.

 

[Insomniator]

Is there a shortage of Doctors?

System seems fine the way it is, no one is going through that much trouble if they aren't good at what they do and do not have their heart in the field.

Haha does lowering the standards for medical school sound like a good idea to anyone?

 

[AreaCode707]

Originally posted by: racolvin
I don't know that I'd be interested in paying for their schooling right off. You have no guarantee they'd graduate with decent grades, or in fact graduate at all.

Now what I would consider would be to forgive their student loans if they agree to work as an internist/family doctor for 5-7 years. As a country we're WAY short of family doctors - to many of them want to be heart surgeons and such.

Seems like a good possible idea. To be honest, I spend so much face time with specialists at this point that I rarely see a primary care doc. Seems superfluous.

So then we'd still be cutting out the pool (that may or may not actually exist outside my head) of qualified people who are unable to get loans or can't reasonably take on the burden of the loans. Maybe with families, maybe second-gen immigrants, people who are low income, not great at working the system, haven't got a credit history because they've paid for everything in cash...?

I don't feel any obligation to pay for the education of that pool, but I do see that, if research were to bear out the idea, there might be the potential for cost-savings on healthcare, making it beneficial to us as a primary effect and to them only as a secondary effect.

 

[AreaCode707]

Originally posted by: Insomniator
Is there a shortage of Doctors?

System seems fine the way it is, no one is going through that much trouble if they aren't good at what they do and do not have their heart in the field.

Haha does lowering the standards for medical school sound like a good idea to anyone?

Depending on the field and speciality there are shortages. In any case, basic laws of supply and demand say that if we had more doctors then the cost for treatment would likely drop. Lowered costs might make it more reasonable for people to get treated earlier on, without expensive emergency room visits, uninsured appointments that wind up getting written off, etc.

And I definitely didn't suggest lowering the standards. I asked the exact opposite; do we have people that meet the standards that for financial reasons alone do not pursue medicine as a career?

 

[racolvin]

From everything I read there is a huge shortage of primary care physicians, which is why I went the direction I did.

 

[dullard]

Helping pay more for medical school will not do a thing. People with 4.0 GPAs and good MCAT scores are rejected all the time from medical school. There is already an massive demand of people wanting to get in. The real change that we need to make is the artificially low supply of slots in the medical schools.

Taxpayers should build more medical schools. Then there would me more slots. More slots = supply meets demand = costs to attend the schools plummet. Also, more doctors = lower medical bills = taxpayers save trillions of dollars. And the price we pay? We have less time to wait since there are more doctors.

Originally posted by: Insomniator
Haha does lowering the standards for medical school sound like a good idea to anyone?

Since when is accepting more people with 4.0 GPAs and good MCAT scores "lowering standards"?

 

[AreaCode707]

Originally posted by: dullard
Helping pay more for medical school will not do a thing. People with 4.0 GPAs and good MCAT scores are rejected all the time from medical school. There is already an massive demand of people wanting to get in. The real change that we need to make is the artificially low supply of slots in the medical schools.

Taxpayers should build more medical schools. Then there would me more slots. More slots = supply meets demand = costs to attend the schools plummet. Also, more doctors = lower medical bills = taxpayers save trillions of dollars. And the price we pay? We have less time to wait since there are more doctors.

Huh, interesting. I wasn't particularly aware that equally or near-equally (they have to filter somehow, right?) qualified applicants get routinely denied due to limited space. Makes sense though.

 

[JS80]

In addition to the fact that the cost/salary structure of the path to becoming a doctor attracts mostly trust fund babies and legacy doctors, there aren't enough medical schools to train more doctors. The AMA has a monopoly on the supply of medical schools and they will fight hard to resist any calls to increase the supply of doctors.

 

[AreaCode707]

Originally posted by: JS80
In addition to the fact that the cost/salary structure of the path to becoming a doctor attracts mostly trust fund babies and legacy doctors, there aren't enough medical schools to train more doctors. The AMA has a monopoly on the supply of medical schools and they will fight hard to resist any calls to increase the supply of doctors.

Why? Wouldn't more of their medical schools mean more cash for them?

 

[ProfJohn]

France has free medical schools.

But their doctors also make a lot less compared to American doctors.

Perhaps we need some kind of GI bill for doctors. The government helps pay their medical school bills in return for service or some type.

 

[MovingTarget]

I wouldn't be opposed to it. It certainly would bring down the cost of healthcare, and would be an important first step to ensuring that everyone has access to affordable/reasonable healthcare services.

 

[fskimospy]

Originally posted by: Insomniator
Is there a shortage of Doctors?

System seems fine the way it is, no one is going through that much trouble if they aren't good at what they do and do not have their heart in the field.

Haha does lowering the standards for medical school sound like a good idea to anyone?

Yes, we have a significantly lower ratio of doctors per capita than most other industrialized countries.

As for the OP, our medical schools are all filled to capacity each year and they reject a lot of qualified applicants. The cost of medical school isn't the problem, we just need more of them.

 

[SammyJr]

I don't think we'd have more doctors. What we really need is more slots in medical schools.

Forgiving student loans is a good idea as an easy way to offer new doctors lower salaries without impacting their quality of life and overall compensation.

 

[JS80]

Originally posted by: AreaCode707

Originally posted by: JS80
In addition to the fact that the cost/salary structure of the path to becoming a doctor attracts mostly trust fund babies and legacy doctors, there aren't enough medical schools to train more doctors. The AMA has a monopoly on the supply of medical schools and they will fight hard to resist any calls to increase the supply of doctors.

Why? Wouldn't more of their medical schools mean more cash for them?

I've heard that medical schools themselves take a huge loss, they are not profit centers. Plus doctors don't make money off medical schools. It's about power and money, and they have the upper hand because it's our health they are extorting us with.

 

[piasabird]

I think most colleges and universities overcharge all students. I see no logical reason for charging anyone $6,000.00 a semester to go to just an average school. This is just highway robbery.

 

[AreaCode707]

Originally posted by: JS80

Originally posted by: AreaCode707

Originally posted by: JS80
In addition to the fact that the cost/salary structure of the path to becoming a doctor attracts mostly trust fund babies and legacy doctors, there aren't enough medical schools to train more doctors. The AMA has a monopoly on the supply of medical schools and they will fight hard to resist any calls to increase the supply of doctors.

Why? Wouldn't more of their medical schools mean more cash for them?

I've heard that medical schools themselves take a huge loss, they are not profit centers. Plus doctors don't make money off medical schools. It's about power and money, and they have the upper hand because it's our health they are extorting us with.

Hm, I wonder what the internal functionings of med schools would be like to prevent them from being profit centers. Just expenses outstripping income? Given how high the cost of medical education is, their expenses must be insane to prevent a profit. Not saying it isn't so, just wishing I had a little more insight.

Pardon a touch of exasperation, but is there anybody who is not taking advantage of us, according to you? Corporate executives steal our cash from under our unwitting noses, doctors extort us at the gunpoint of our health, people who make over $250k are doing so at the deliberate and unfair expense of the working class... Apparently the government is the only entity that should have any substantial amount of money, in your view.

I'd have a much easier time processing your comments as unbiased and factual if you didn't include as many generalizations about the evil motivations of these very diverse groups of people. Sure, there are doctors in it for the cash and the power, but there are also docs in it for the love of helping people. Even the cash and power docs aren't doing it for the sheer evil desire to exploit though.

 

[Wreckem]

1. There is a shortage of doctors, especially in some fields.
2. This shortage is caused by hard caps on admitted students the AMA puts on Med Schools.

The AMA isnt protecting peoples health from bad Dr's as Med Schools deny thousands of qualified applicants every year. They dont need to lower standards at all. They just need to up the hard caps and open more medical schools. They are simply protecting the salaries of current and future Dr's. This is part of the reason medical costs stay high.

 

[dullard]

Originally posted by: AreaCode707
Why? Wouldn't more of their medical schools mean more cash for them?

The AMA is filled with *gasp* medical doctors. The more they limit the supply of medical doctors, the higher the salary of all medical doctors. This includes the AMA members.

Just about everything that needs a "license" above and beyond education and experience fits the same category. An engineer can get a perfect GPA at a top engineering school, pass all the college's tests with flying colors, work at a stellar company and perform highly there. But until he passes an additional PE (professional engineers) test that covers nothing that wasn't already covered, he/she can't sign an engineering document. That is really crazy if you think about it. Why do they do it? It keeps PE salaries higher and it is PEs that make the rules.

They do it in the name of "safety". And we bend over and take it. Few people question if a test outside of college that shows a PE knows basic math/science actually proves that he/she is a safer engineer. I say if that engineer can prove himself/herself in an accredited college AND isn't fired from his/her job doing engineering work then he/she has done enough. Same goes for medical doctors.

 

[MagicConch]

If you want more doctors, probably the fastest way is for someone to make a list of foreign med schools that meet standards of the US (yes there are good foreign med schools) and provide a fasttrack to get those people here with citizenship, as well as a system for local people who don't get into med schools here to go there and come back free of hassles. Cheaper than building new med schools and you can kill the program when you achieve critical mass. Bad idea to pay for med school b/c you will be paying to educate many future plastic surgeons, etc. that will lie during med school and say they want to eventually commit their whole lives to geriatrics, doctors w/o borders, and infectious diseases. lol, those dudes are everywhere in the system. If you really want to give away money best bet is at residency level to encourage more doctors to do primary care (and no matter what you give them, they will still be thinking they'd rather have a higher salary by specializing and forgo the temporary, relatively small, incentive)

 

[rudder]

Originally posted by: Insomniator
Is there a shortage of Doctors?

System seems fine the way it is, no one is going through that much trouble if they aren't good at what they do and do not have their heart in the field.

Haha does lowering the standards for medical school sound like a good idea to anyone?

In some areas there are shortages. And in some areas women cannot fiund an OB/GYN doctor... they give up because of malpractice insurance and lawsuits.

 

[Slew Foot]

if any of you were actually on a med school ad com
you'd realize that most of the so called qualified applicants make terrible doctors. I'd venture to guess that of the people who finish med school, 25% are woefully bad. Even after residency, a good 15% shouldn't be in practice