Socialist America?

rocketman08
Sun, 14 Jun 2009 15:34:16 +0000

Are we likely to see a totally socialized system in the US? No. Will we see an at least partially socialized system? Yes (in fact we have this already e.g. Medicare).

Nobody is seriously proposing a government single payer system in the US… there are serious problems with such a system and the US doesn’t want to make these same mistakes. However at the same time it’s clear that a fully privatized system does not work either as it’s simply impossible to run a profitable company based on the concept of giving everyone equal access to healthcare regardless of income or pre-existing conditions.

The current proposals on the table will essentially expand the current government programs to ensure that everyone will have access to health coverage. They will also directly compete with private plans to help drive down prices.



what effect would that have on the life of a doctor?

The basics would stay the same, but a government funded system would be just as, if not even more, bureaucratic than what we have now… that won’t go away. Just ask current docs about dealing with Medicare and they’ll give you an earfull…



Salary

It’s no secret that for all but fully private cash only practices (e.g. Botox beauty docs) there will be heavy negative pressures on salary. ‘Controlling healthcare costs’ means a lot of things (e.g. eliminating unnecessary tests and procedures), but one of those is limiting salaries as this is one of the biggest expenses.

Expect to see a lot more standardization. Salaries will still be very good (relative to other jobs) but this is not a profession to go into to ‘get rich.’ (Current docs will tell you those days are essentially gone even now…)



hours

Probably not much change here…



medical school

It’s not been mentioned too much, but it’s possible that in exchange for lower salaries medical school would be fully or partially subsidized. Ultimately it will be a supply and demand thing… if people are still lining up around the block to attend medical school even with the rollout of whatever system is going to be rolled out then it wouldn’t make much financial sense to subsidize it too much… but if the future changes turn away a lot of folks (who, if they just wanted money, probably should have never gone there to being with) then subsidies could be put in place to attract the right people into medical schools.