Biotech Values

[microcapfun]

OT/restricting the number of doctors - rant

I am amazed to find myself agreeing 100% with a croumagnon post (reproduced below) for the first time. I learned about this issue for myself when my x-wife doctor came to the U.S. and her medical training at Oxford and Cambridge wasn't enough for the AMA. Nor her residency and practice in Oxford after getting her degree. But for a loophole cleverly exploited, she would have had to do her residency over again in order to be able to practice in the U.S. Imagine spending two years working 80 hours a week for peanuts - for no reason other than because the AMA realizes that the average amount of money a doctor makes is inversely proportional to the number of doctors - and that's something they can restrict.

The loophole? She was hired as a Professor at a University in the U.S. I guess even the AMA realizes the absurdity of requiring those who are teaching residents to simultaneously be residents themselves ...

My 2nd and present wife is a MD/PhD, but she can not even call herself an MD let alone practice medicine, because her MD was also obtained abroad. Doesn't matter that her training was probably better than 90% of U.S. MDs; she would have had to spend at least 2-3 years taking exams and doing residency in the U.S. to become board certified, and she wasn't willing to go through that. As a result, even though she mainly uses her Ph.D in her job, her annual income is probably $20-30K less than it would be if she was board certified - and she can never be promoted, because the job above her requires an MD/PhD ...

The AMA is a glorified union. Their behavior is for the benefit of doctors, not patients.

croumagnon: >>This can easily be remedied if the AMA would stop their quota on medical schools and on accepting foreign doctors into resisdency programs. While I appreciate the heavy load on many MDs, this is only by design from the AMA and there is no reason on earth why a medical doctor should be making 10 times more than what a PhD makes in this country, when in fact the PhD has to spend more time in graduate school and is never financially rewarded for their respective accomplishments except when they put their talents to work for Goldman Sachs...LOL...

I am not denigrating the medical profession but I think MDs have had too easy for too long in the US when it comes to making a living. Mind you I come from a family of medical doctors going back all the way to my grandparents and all the way to my nephews and nieces, with two of my brothers being successful medical doctors. Often times when we get together as a family the discussion drifts into the disparity in income between PhDs and MDs, and even the MDs agree that the system is badly skewed mainly because of the artificial shortage of MDs that the AMA has created... <<