Should We Worry About Doctors' Salaries?
Posted at 8:45 a.m. on Feb. 25
Felix Salmon thinks there is a major gap in the recent in-depth Time magazine piece on the US health care system — it “never says how much money doctors deserve, how much they actually make, or how high physician salaries would need to be in order to make future doctors want to practice.”
“That last one, in particular, seems very unconvincing to me: the world is full of highly-qualified doctors who would love to be able to practice in the U.S. for much less than the current going rate… It’s a bit weird, the degree to which Brill cares so greatly about keeping doctors’ salaries high.”
“Here’s my idea: any healthcare insurer should be allowed to get rid of its cost negotiators, and instead be able to get Medicare to pay for all procedures on its behalf. Medicare would then bill the insurer… Would doctors be paid less, under such as system? Possibly. But that shouldn’t prevent the change from happening, and maybe the government should simply step in to top up doctors’ salaries where necessary.”
