Jethro Bodine, that inimitable character from the old Beverly Hillbillies show, could never quite decide whether to become a brain surgeon or a fry cook. Sadly, such such career dilemmas are all too real under socialized medicine. Arnold Kling relays the following gag that illustrates this reality as it manifests itself in Cuba:
One Cuban young woman complains to another. “He lied to me! He told me that he was a luggage handler! It turns out, he’s nothing but a neurosurgeon!”
The joke, unfortunately, is on the Cuban people. Kling explains:
Luggage handlers working the tourist hotels often make more in one day than medical doctors receive in a month.
Such absurd resource allocations inevitably result when government arbitrarily sets the wages that physicians receive—a fact that CMS has yet to absorb.
Comments 2
A fella I know who was a neurologist in the Ukraine made about $30/week in the late 90s. But, as he always clarified, “The training there wasn’t equivalent to your training here for neurologists. I was a doctor, but was trained about as well as an American PA, just like everyone else.”
Posted 16 Mar 2008 at 11:50 am ¶Primary care medicine is arguably the most socialized branch of medicine (most dependent on Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, price controlled HMOs, etc.).
Hence it is doomed.
Posted 16 Mar 2008 at 12:55 pm ¶Post a Comment