Doctors Are Not Underpaid
Posted at 1 p.m. on Feb. 26
Matthew Yglesias: “It’s true that many American doctors do believe that they would be crushed if they were paid only Medicare rates. They insist they’re hard-pressed as it is… But that’s not remotely true. The last time the OECD looked at this (PDF), they found that…America has the highest-paid general practitioners in the world.”
“We could offset some of that impact by helping doctors out with medical malpractice reform and more government funding for medical school tuition. But a shortage of people wanting to enter the medical pipeline is the last thing we should be worrying about… Any shortage of primary caregivers…is about bad rules limiting the number of people who can practice, not a lack of monetary incentives. We need more residencies and more scope for nurses to work unsupervised, not higher-paid doctors.”
