Comments on: "If you don’t care to have pity for physicians, fine"

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 01:23:00 +0000

i think that medicare needs to pay healthcare costs and not chiropractic care and not the ridiculous markup on durable medical equipment. personally how much money does medicare pay for wheelchairs and diabetic supplies, because those companies advertise each evening on TV so clearly there is some profit in there. I don’t think there needs to be that much profit for that kind of stuff.

By: Family Med Resident

Family Med Resident — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 19:04:00 +0000

I think there will always be plenty of people vying for medical school slots. I don’t know the numbers now, but when I was applying 8 years ago there was 1 slot for every 3 applicants. New medical schools are being built and established schools are expanding their class size in (what I think is a futile) effort to produce more primary care providers, so I imagine there are now more slots to satisfy applicants. However, even if the number of applicants dropped by, say, 30%, schools would still probably be turning down a good 40% of applicants. The difference will be that more of them have access to an American education and less will have to go to Mexican or Caribbean schools, which theoretically could lead to even less people going to primary care as FMGs typically “settle” for family medicine slots because they can’t get in anywhere else.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 13:24:00 +0000

OK, so we buy your claim that you’re underpaid (not that you’re not paid well, because you are, just that it’s not enough). So where do we get more money to pay you? More taxes?

By: PharmacistMike

PharmacistMike — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 18:34:00 +0000

With the mental gymnastics and intestinal fortitude it takes to get through med school/residency and the lifestyle that being a physician entails one should at least be paid very well for it. Unfortunately, physicians do not seem to get paid that well anymore and it certainly would push people away from the profession. Not that money is everything but it does help make up for the other issues.