Saturday, April 2, 2016

The Accelerating Primary Care Doctor Shortage

This should not come as a surprise, given Obamacare.

While Paul Krugman continues to yap that Obamacare is a success because of the number insured, the real question should be  what kind of care will people get under centrally planned healthcare. It won't be good.


Whenever there is a "shortage" you have to look at controls in the pricing. Shortages can't occur in a free market, They do all the time where prices are centrally planned and that is going on as MarketWatch explains:

Here’s what’s involved:
• How doctors get paid: Choosing to go into primary care is also a choice of lesser pay.
Starting salaries in high-paying specialties can range from $354,000 (general surgery) to $488,000 (orthopedic surgery), while primary-care fields tend to bring a sub-$200,000 starting salary, from$188,000 (pediatrics) to $199,000 (family medicine), according to a Merritt Hawkins report.
The pay disparities reflect America’s “fee for service” health-care model, which compensates providers based on the number and type of services they complete, and which inherently favors specialists.

3 comments:

  1. I read this article and it clearly is written by a statist who can not comprehend the problem of government caused "problems." The article goes on:
    "• The government’s role (or lack thereof): In the U.S., though government dollars sponsor aspects of medical education, especially residencies, there’s no oversight in how doctors are sorted into various specialties."

    "how doctors are sorted" and there is the fatal conceit of the central planners who think they know how to allocate resources.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Im pretty sure there is a difference either way, but is this their pay before they have to pay malpractice insurance. The cost of such insurance can differ greatly between different specialties. Also, it is significant to point out that specialists require additional training, which would be a factor in their pay disparity. I'm not saying Obamacare isn't having an effect, but specialists have always gotten paid more than GPs and FPs.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Remember some of the early interventions into the medical industry were to constrict the supply of doctors to increase the income of doctors. Thus in a free market economic sense there's been a shortage of doctors for the past century.

    ReplyDelete