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Originally Posted by SoonerCoug
I agree that this would be a good thing.
Actually, the government already does pay for the medical schooling of people who also do a PhD degree (like me), in order to encourage MDs to enter research and academia. You don't have to have a PhD to do academic medicine, but it can be helpful especially for basic science work.
The point is--academic MDs make less money than private practice docs, and so the government funds these MD/PhD programs. In addition, the government will pay 35,000 dollars a year of med school debt for two years of post-graduate research to lessen the debt burden on academic docs.
Here is a question: how much has the free market driven up physician salaries? I mean--if you want to go to an accupuncturist to treat your cancer or heart disease, you could do this, and it'd probably save you money. Would it help with the disease? Not likely, unless you have an interesting placebo effect.
If you want to actually solve the problem, you need to go to someone who has significant expertise. Should there be more of these people in the country in order to drive down demand and thereby also drive down salaries? I think the answer to this question is related to access to physicians. Is there a problem getting access to a doctor? It's supply and demand, right? How difficult is it to get an appointment with a doctor if you're very sick? Compared to other countries, it's pretty darn easy to get an appointment in the states. In Canada, you might have to wait 6 months, and the doctor makes much less money. I think that the demand suggests that the supply of doctors is adequate, for most specialties (not for dermatology, though).
My point is: I don't think this is a supply and demand issue. I think it's a question of how valuable is the service that is being provided.
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the reason that I ask is to gauge the feelings of physicians about an even greater governmental subsidy. I had a political science class on governmental policy systems, and I learned that in Germany there is a total subsidy of medical school ( I am uncertain whether this includes living expenses, but I assume that it does). This helps young doctors make it more easily in the early years, but also, it tends to put a ceiling on what doctors earn there, since there is an oversupply.
The German model , in which you have compulsory insurance is worth a look to fix our medical system. I think that we definitely ought look at other health care systems to see what they do that works, in order to drive our health care spending down, and also, to make the system more efficient in providing more preventive access, etc.
i am not with Mormon Red Death in thinking that governmental involvement in an area ALWAYS equals a problem, but I do think that the less intervention is better in almost every area. But Health Care might very well be one of the few areas in which governmental is not only necessary, but smart. The truth is that continuing on the same path is unlikely to produce better results, and health is not an area to be trifled with.