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Comment by qsera

5 days ago

>When we should let doctors from overseas immigrate and easily become practicing doctors here in the US.

Lol, what does this has to do with anything regarding aptitude or curiosity!?

If we reduce the artificial shortage of doctors then the number of people entering the field specifically to make big money goes down.

  • > people entering the field specifically to make big money goes down...

    This is a self defeating argument, because for it to work it requires that there is a larger number of people who love the field than the number of people who are in only for the $$$ (or else there will be even more scarcity of doctors)..

    Which is not the case.

    • We have a surplus of people that want to become doctors and would work hard enough to do so. If we removed the artificial limits on residency, the supply of doctors would increase, which lowers wages somewhat, which lowers the number of people that want to become doctors. It reaches a new balance point with more doctors than before.

      That itself is a good thing.

      For it to also improve the motivations of doctors, all that needs to be true is that someone more motivated by money is more likely to be in the group that switches career.

      It does not require the number of people that love the field to be a majority. Not that loving the field is a binary in the first place. People are a mix of motivations and cutoffs are arbitrary.

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To the parent posters credit, he's very honest that he developed a personal complex against doctors when he was a poor student. He just sees it as a way to lash out at American doctors, the irony being that foreign medical graduates leaving their families and communities to practice in America largely do so because they are exceptionally money motivated. That doesn't make them bad doctors, but there's certainly less likelihood they're doing it purely for the love of medicine or a desire to care for their communities.

I do agree with the sentiment though that the US needs to fund more residency slots as it's an asinine professional barrier, and that we would benefit from more physicians coming from more diverse financial backgrounds.

  • > certainly less likelihood they're doing it purely for the love of medicine or a desire to care for their communities.

    Maybe self preservation?

    In east europe, public hospitals will force doctors to work 36 hours shifts (overnight ER with theoretical sleep). Doctors have a full criminal liability for mall practise.