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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   25604 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 20, 2024

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This seems kinda backwards from an organizational perspective. Being a doctor requires that you be really smart because they're all really busy because there aren't enough doctors, so we can only admit really smart candidates to medical school.

Wouldn't lowering standards and increasing the number of doctors improve things significantly if that's the argument?

I've argued in the past that it's helpful for doctors to be intelligent and here I present an example that comes from a little bit of a different direction than usual, but most of the selection criteria are more about diligence, toughness, and hard work, all of which is best preserved.

However, even if you take case numbers down to say 15 inpatients for a hospitalist you still need a lot of those skills if you get a couple of rough admits at once.

You'll find most doctors (myself included) want more doctors, but the tone of this discussion online is always "wow doctors are useless and overpaid, let's just create more from the aether and dump their salaries which will solve healthcare costs" which is not how any of this works.

I rarely see people online weighing in who actually understand healthcare economics or seem to understand and respect what doctors actually do.

Wouldn't lowering standards and increasing the number of doctors improve things significantly if that's the argument?

Yes! Except people always want the best doctors, so you need a way to gatekeep access to the top of the crop, either by making them more expensive to the consumer or by mandating you have to see Dr. Washington or Dr. Lopez before you're allowed to see Dr. Swami or Dr. Smith before you are allowed to see Dr. Wang or Dr. Leibowitz.

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