Comment on The average doctor in the U.S. makes $350,000 a year. Why?
FinalBoy1975@lemmy.world 1 year agoYou can become a doctor of anything useless to society. It’s expensive to become a doctor of medicine in the USA. The system is broken. Where I live, these practitioners make much less and their education was paid for by the state. Their salaries are much lower.
Encode1307@lemm.ee 1 year ago
The state is you. You’re paying for their education either way, either through exorbitant salary or higher tax burden.
FinalBoy1975@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yes, but their salary is lower because they have no loans to repay and they don’t bill insurance companies. You see, there are three things missing here that exist in the United States that artificially make the salary higher: 1) universal corporate health care 2) student loans 3) university tuition and fees. My taxes pay for the doctors’ education. When they graduate and get a job, my taxes pay their salary. My taxes also pay for all things related to health care. The result? It’s all cheaper, including doctors’ salaries. I don’t have to pay a dime if I go to the doctor when I have a health problem. It isn’t magic. It makes sense. Remove private corporations from the scene and the cost is lower. Also, make higher education available to everyone who is intellectually capable and the cost is lower. Oh yeah, where I live, you can’t become a doctor just because your mom and dad have lots of money. You have to take a state-approved exam when you graduate from high school. If you score high enough you can study to become a doctor. There’s a cut-off score. And this is why doctors travel from this country to the USA to work. They take advantage of the ridiculously high salary and have no student loan debt to pay back.
kersploosh@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
You do pay to go to the doctor; you simply pay in advance through taxes. Their salaries are lower partly because you paid for their education. And depending on your country your taxes may also be paying for their office space, their equipment, their retirement pensions, etc. In the end you pay for everything, whether directly or indirectly.
there1snospoon@ttrpg.network 1 year ago
Let’s not pretend that me paying $500 two weeks ago for a CT scan which showed a small lesion in my pancreas, then $600 this week for an MRI which was inconclusive due to motion artifacts, with another $500 CT scan recommended in 6 months, all while I pay $550 per month for corporate insurance that then tells me I must pay a minimum of $7000 out of pocket (my $1200 deductible doesn’t apply to these procedures for some strange reason)(equivalent to about 1/6 to 1/7 of my annual wages) before they will pay their share, while still being expected to pay around $1100 a month for housing, $300 every two weeks for groceries and $650 a month for car note, $240 for car insurance, and all this after I also put taxes that apparently are only useful for either bombing other nations, sending bombs to other nations, or shooting black and brown people when they sneeze wrong. (I do support Ukraine’s defensive War and retaking their stolen land.)
Do not pretend that the American system is in any way feasible or preferable. It’s simply designed to funnel money from us poors to the wealthy.