Is it still worth it?

[PhoenixFlare500]

do you not understand basic economics? medical school tuition (and regular university education) is expensive because schools know that no matter what price they charge students will just take a government guaranteed loan and pay that amount. without these government subsidies the number of applicants would be reduced and schools would be forced to immediately cut costs until students could afford to attend once more. there is absolutely no need for medical education to be expensive if government gets out of the way and stops interfering in the free market.

So basic economics dictates that it costs $10-40k a year to train one medical student? That all of your tuition paid goes towards the university's pocketbook? That a student loan is the only type of government subsidy involved?

[NLengr]

also, in a privatized healthcare system the consumer will be spending his own money for the utilization of healthcare providers and so he has an incentive to choose based on effectiveness and cost. no rational person can make the claim that a government will better utilize the wealth of its citizens than the citizens themselves can.

 

From a financing medical treatments point of view, it's pretty easy to see that the average person is not equipped to interpret complex medical data and make decisions, and therefore may not utilize healthcare dollars in a more efficient way than a government would.

 

Look at how many people were swindled in with the Zamboni procedure. Absolutely no evidence supporting it, widespread criticism from experts, and inherent risks, yet people still wasted their money and subjected themselves to a surgical procedure in a foreign country.

 

I can't believe I re-entered this disaster of a thread. I should know better.

[Teflon Don]

well first off universities are not obeying free market economics - they don't make a profit, they are publicly funded to a large degree, and the number and location of them is highly restricted by the government. They charge the tuition they do because the provincial government lets them charge it - they were only allowed to follow the guidelines assigned to them. You have to model them somewhat differently.

 

we can play in the economics sandbox though! Assuming they did obey fundamental economics then the first axiom would be that there was complete and free exchange of information required by all in order for it to reach optimal utility by the participants. Actually that is exactly why I am on the forum still - ha, there isn't equal access to information and people don't know how the system works early enough to make the sorts of choices that even the playing field. This is in part why I think the distribution of people attending medical schools by parental income has shifted over the past decade in favour of higher incomes. Medicine isn't viewed as a viable career right from the starting gate - or more correctly to extend the analogy, it is actually before that in the training period before the race. Disparities in information create sub-optimal outcomes and inefficiencies. The right would call that a failure of the market and resulting less skilled doctors (potentially), and the left would call it a form of classism. I don't care what you call it but I don't like it

 

Second off medical education simply put is expensive. The base cost is about 60-70K+ a year per student - seen the numbers, worked on the models, know the costs. Getting the government out of it would simply result in a loss of control and subsidy and the price would natural rise (as it has anywhere else in the world where free economics has been applied to medical education). We have a free educational market with respect to yes the US but also all the other international schools. The competition there hasn't exactly dropped the cost of the schooling.

 

Next we may now be in a period of incredibly low interest rates and are amazingly lucky that it looks like those will continue for a bit longer (US and Can are suggesting some point in 2015 for a rise. For us with fixed loans that is pretty good thing). Of course basing the entire system on the assumption that interest rates are stable at historical lows seems unwise . It is unlikely tuition could for instance fall if rate rose to maintain some for of balance (when was the last time a tuition fell for anything that anyone recalls?).

 

and the 19th century US economics had free and unrestrained capitalism and age of great expansion and growth of wealth. It also resulted in the worst workers rights violations imaginable, child labour, insane working conditions and hours, lack of education for most and environmental destruction on a massive scale. It fueled the rise of the unions and many of the social structures that we now take for granted. We have to be very careful if we are cherry picking good things from that time period.

 

You have to ask yourself what is the point of the economic system you chose to setup and what fundamental limitations does that system impose. Pure communism creates equal slices of pie for everyone but the pie itself is much smaller. Pure capitalism creates a bigger pie but some people are left with crumbs to eat (if that) while other gorge. Economics - a social science after all - is concerned with maximizing utility (ie net happiness) and most models such some from of balance between the two is more optimal (surprise, surprise balance in all things after all). What exactly is the goal here? What are we trying to accomplish? If you aren't focused on the goals all you are doing is screaming ideology after a point and frankly that is a) unproductive and boring.

 

you think we are lucky to live in an era where central banks set unnaturally low interest rates and create artificial wealth by printing money? i don't want to be disrespectful but there is no point discussing alternatives when the other person doesn't even understand whats wrong with the current system.

[rmorelan]

One thing I will mention - and this is why I didn't continue on in part in economics past my UG in it - that most economists who are starting out or who are completely trained (the middle seems less likely to do this) are remarkably limited in understanding and applying the rules of economics in the real world because they fail to remind themselves of the assumptions the field is based on. Instead they build this beautiful intellectual castles of theory and thought that utterly collapse when applied to real world behaviour.

 

Just to start with:

 

1) People are not completely rational

2) Information is not universally accessible and many things are simply known by no one.

3) People cannot compute risks accurately

4) People actually are really, really bad at knowing what makes them happy.

 

Most economic models depend on the opposite of those.

 

We are wonderful creatures of energy, emotion and logical thought but we are very tough to model. I can tap dance on supply and demand curves like anyone else trained but that doesn't mean they are perfectly accurate models. Far from it

[Teflon Don]

From a financing medical treatments point of view, it's pretty easy to see that the average person is not equipped to interpret complex medical data and make decisions, and therefore may not utilize healthcare dollars in a more efficient way than a government would.

 

Look at how many people were swindled in with the Zamboni procedure. Absolutely no evidence supporting it, widespread criticism from experts, and inherent risks, yet people still wasted their money and subjected themselves to a surgical procedure in a foreign country.

 

I can't believe I re-entered this disaster of a thread. I should know better.

 

 

the government is not responsible for protecting you from your own stupidity. more precisely, productive tax paying members of society are not responsible for protecting idiots from themselves.

[rmorelan]

you think we are lucky to live in an era where central banks set unnaturally low interest rates and create artificial wealth by printing money? i don't want to be disrespectful but there is no point discussing alternatives when the other person doesn't even understand whats wrong with the current system.

 

I personally am lucky. Both of those things you mention make me wealthier. I am paying virtually no interest on my loans particularly relative to inflation, and eventually "printing" money will make those loans effectively deflate in value. Plus the artificial environment are making my capital investments dramatically rise in value over the past 1.5 years upwards of 30 to 40% so I am winning there as well. Real estate holdings are locked in at record lows and already seen the well understood gains commonly seen in the last 5 years and I am protected well past the point of the current economic conditions (well most likely at least)

 

Eventually the current growth spurt will end as all of them do but by then I will be divested and ready to pick up bargains on the flip side when the markets tank, and ready for the next cycle.

 

Doesn't mean it is good for everyone. Doesn't mean I agree with it either, but I didn't take economics for 4 years to be blind to its effects

 

I didn't say there wasn't things wrong with the current system. In fact I said the exact opposite in the last section - there will ALWAYS be something wrong with any system. The point is to know exactly what that is and decide as a society if it is worth it compared to something else.

[rmorelan]

the government is not responsible for protecting you from your own stupidity. more precisely, productive tax paying members of society are not responsible for protecting idiots from themselves.

 

I would argue to a point that the protecting you mention is exactly why we have governments - to do just that. To force people to do things and obey rules that collectively benefit everyone even when you otherwise would personally disagree with them. Particularly in our system because "protecting idiots from themselves" is more cost effective than the alternatives.

[Teflon Don]

as long as people like you are personally profiting from it then its alright that savers are being robbed. as long as those who borrow and spend are gaining at the expense of those who produce and save then everything is just dandy. this is surely the closest we could have to a moral and productive financial system.

[HycrestJIT]

This thread is full of ideological win.

[rmorelan]

as long as people like you are personally profiting from it then its alright that savers are being robbed. as long as those who borrow and spend are gaining at the expense of those who produce and save then everything is just dandy. this is surely the closest we could have to a moral and productive financial system.

 

sarcasm?

 

I am neither a borrower and spender, or a producer and a saver. I am a borrower and producer. In other words an investor. Take money at a low cost and generate goods and services with it for a higher cost through work, planning and maybe with practice (ha more practice) eventual skill. That is how the system is supposed to work and always has.

 

I would argue the complete lack of regulation or adhering to moral dangerous patterns of free wheeling leveraged investing created the mess we got into - pretty close to the 19th century approach to running things until it collapsed. Then we swung the other way and bailed everyone out, somehow displaying interestingly the weaknesses of BOTH extreme capitalism and socialism in alternation. Now we are trying to recover from one mess with a form of deferring that will create another one of course.

[rmorelan]

Hey, the star just had an article on some of this:

 

http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CDEQqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thestar.com%2Fnews%2Finsight%2F2013%2F11%2F02%2Feconomists_deserve_the_battering_theyre_getting.html&ei=Bk11UseNKsblyAHIxoFQ&usg=AFQjCNESweUsEfTxW7QMgxxdFgZakZpoYw&sig2=Pivjvl6krk2zGl3lxspTjQ&bvm=bv.55819444,d.aWc

[Teflon Don]

sarcasm?

 

I am neither a borrower and spender, or a producer and a saver. I am a borrower and producer. In other words an investor. Take money at a low cost and generate goods and services with it for a higher cost through work, planning and maybe with practice (ha more practice) eventual skill. That is how the system is supposed to work and always has.

 

I would argue the complete lack of regulation or adhering to moral dangerous patterns of free wheeling leveraged investing created the mess we got into - pretty close to the 19th century approach to running things until it collapsed. Then we swung the other way and bailed everyone out, somehow displaying interestingly the weaknesses of BOTH extreme capitalism and socialism in alternation. Now we are trying to recover from one mess with a form of deferring that will create another one of course.

 

if you're talking about the US financial collapse in 08 then you are simply wrong to say that it was a failure of free market capitalism. the government was wholly responsible for the collapse. the fed kept interest rates low, mandated loans to high risk home buyers and guaranteed bank deposits so that savers would not care about who the banks were loaning out their money to. in a free market none of those things would have happened. the market would have set interest rates and banks would not have made the kind of risky loans they made because the banks depositors would have demanded that their non-guaranteed deposits be used responsibly.

 

and the star article is such a farce. 5 years later and most of these propagandists(especially Krugman) still don't understand how the US got into the mess in the first place. more regulation? are you kidding me. what world are these people living in. they must also think inflation creates wealth and minimum wage laws are good for the poor. what a joke.

[seeking1]

ITT: ugh...2-3 Libertarians ruining the OP's post. And too many people taking them seriously, and arguing with them. Get back to answering the OP!

 

To OP: it may still be financially feasible to be a doctor of some kind and work in a metro area, yes, but you need to be smarter these days about a) what kind of doctor you want to be and what area you want to live in.

 

This all gets back to the issue of crappy health human resource planning (HHR). That is, here in Canada, HHR barely exists, at all. The best I have seen was Ontario's Population Needs-Based Physician Simulation Model from 2010. Have you seen it yet? Its an excellent document.

 

(Disclaimer to everyone: it is but one piece of evidence and a potential forecast of the kinds of physicians needed in different areas in Ontario, no one can be absolutely certain about the quantity and types of physicians needed, please don't harass me with strawmen about my lack of precision in quoting models, I will ignore you.)

[Renoir]

sarcasm?

 

thanks for following this thread through, rmorelan. How you maintain a neutral tone is incredible, but primarily your seeing the argument through to its well argued conclusion was quite satisfying. Cheers