Do Doctors Make More Money In The Us Or In France

Whenever new physician salary information is released, reporters and policy experts frequently compare physician salaries in the The states to those of other countries: nearly notably, France.

And on cue, Vox's Sarah Kliff — normally an excellent wellness care writer, by the way — is uncharacteristically lazy in framing doctor salaries through a biased lens.

After presenting the data, she writes, "Primary care doctors in the U.s.a., do tend to earn a lot more their counterparts abroad. Ane 2011 report, which looked at doctor salaries from 2008, found that the average main care dr. in France earns about $95,000, compared to the $186,000 that physicians net in the U.s.."

For a site that prides itself on providing context to the news, these numbers require a fleck more, well, explaining.

The articulate implication is that American physicians are paid too much, and unduly contribute to our rising wellness costs. In fact, Kliff says information technology outright: "Doctor salaries are a pretty significant part of the reason why the United States spends more per person on health care than any other developed land."

Really? According to pediatrician and the New York Times' The Upshot correspondent Aaron Carroll,

In 2006, physician salaries accounted for $138 billion in costs, which is nowhere near 56% of health intendance spending. Plus, some of that is to be expected. Calculations by McKinsey pegged "excess spending" on md salary, or that which was above what you'd await given the wealth of the US, at $64 billion.

That's not an insignificant amount of money. But it'south not the major cause of our over-spending on health care.

And listen to historic Princeton economist Uwe Reinhardt, besides writing in the New York Times:

Cutting doctors' take-home pay would non actually solve the American price crisis. The total corporeality Americans pay their physicians collectively represents simply about 20 percent of total national health spending. Of this total, close to half is absorbed by the physicians' practice expenses, including malpractice premiums, merely excluding the amortization of college and medical-schoolhouse debt.

This makes the physicians' collective take-habitation pay simply about x percentage of full national health spending. If nosotros somehow managed to cutting that take-home pay by, say, 20 percent, nosotros would reduce full national wellness spending by only ii percent, in return for a wholly demoralized medical profession to which we and then often look to save our lives. Information technology strikes me as a poor strategy.

What near fail to include when comparing physician salaries beyond countries is the cost of medical educational activity and medical malpractice.  Allow'southward consider France, the get-to land when pointing out how expensive health intendance is in the United States.

Medical education in French republic is government subsidized versus a median 4-year cost of a private American medical school of $286,806.

Medical malpractice in France is based on a national no-fault compensation scheme versus an American medical malpractice system where OB/GYNs in some New York counties pay annual malpractice premiums of $227,899:

Comparing physician salaries with those in other countries is fine.  Fifty-fifty maxim American physicians get paid too much is okay.  Just if y'all want to cut physician pay in the U.s., also reform the cost of medical education and medical malpractice to match systems of those abroad.  Don't choice and choose numbers to fit an agenda.

If yous want to pay me like a French doctor, also give me the French cost of medical school and the French medical malpractice system. Any takers?

Kevin Pho is an internal medicine physician and co-author ofEstablishing, Managing, and Protecting Your Online Reputation: A Social Media Guide for Physicians and Medical Practices. He is on the editorial board of contributors,USA Today, and is founder and editor,KevinMD.com, also on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn.

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Source: https://www.kevinmd.com/2014/05/pay-french-doctor.html#:~:text=One%202011%20study%2C%20which%20looked,net%20in%20the%20United%20States.%E2%80%9D

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