164 Doctors

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Medicine is a taught skill, not rocket science, and learning medicine needs a total rework. People get into medicine by taking a series of very difficult timed memory tests, exactly the kind of short-term, plastic memory that human beings start losing at about the age 18, and by 35 it is obviously apparent they no longer have: by 50, everyone is stupid if you use a timed memory exam to determine their intelligence. Your 40-year old doctor who went through pre-med & graduated med school at 25 may be a total idiot now because their qualifications are not like other professions that test true intelligence. There are many good doctors because the field attracts intelligent people in the first place, but the adulation that physicians receive is misplaced: if you're going to idolize intelligence then look for a Ph.D. in the hard sciences.</p> <p>Secondly, why are our doctors treated like rockstars? Only North America requires physicians to have a Doctorate degree, and only North American have such outrageous education costs. Other countries start their medical training at 17 when students graduate Secondary School, and most publically sponsor medical education as a public good. Subsequently, their medical graduates don’t require such inflated payment just to pay off loans, nor are valuable potential engineers veered into medicine because of the pay & prestige. The NHS, Great Britain's socialized medicine, and most of the rest of the World, teach promising high school students to be doctors, guarantee them residency & pay them about $150K/year plus bonuses & specialty premiums.</p> <p>The so-called shortage of doctors is also manufactured. Other "professional" licenses are odious but nothing compares to medicine for bureaucratic grandstanding & sanctimonious gate-keeping: the AMA lobby specializes in preventing more physicians from entering the field. A further artificial limitation is the number of residencies, which is part of the Medicare appropriation from congress and hasn't changed since 1998. Over 16,000 graduated doctors were left unmatched to a residency this year, and without a residency they cannot license, and without a license they can only become cabdrivers. It will take at least a generation to reset expectations & rechannel America's love-affair with doctors to something more appropriate with reality.</p>