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MCATs, Affirmative Action, and DEI, Oh My

What is this thread about? :unsure:

Since it's all over the place, let me add a bit. First of all, I looked up the average age for when a doctor starts to practice and it's between 25 and 29, hardly middle age. Of course that varies as I read about an NP recently who wanted to become an MD and she was just accepted to medical school at age 70. One of my former doctors had a Phd in engineering and then went to med school so she was close to 40 when she started to practice. She was brilliant intellectually, but also a space head in many ways. I was tempted to add all the times I've been misdiagnosed or mistreated by doctors, but that would take up way too much room. I despise most doctors. I prefer an NP for primary care and I've only known two who weren't very competent.

Also, doctors don't heal anyone. They give advice and write prescriptions. There are very few I've known who I would trust. Some do surgery or other procedures etc. But, people who live healthy lifestyles and follow good medical advice are healed by their own behavior. Some surgeons are excellent, while others often fuck things up. So many doctors are assholes and many aren't that bright regardless of how many years they spent in school. Btw, one of the residents where I volunteer is a retired OBGyn doc and I recently found out that he spent time in prison for botching up abortions, like leaving a dead fetus in the woman. This happened more than once.

My bro in law is a dentist and he's not that smart, despite taking all those science courses required for his dental degree from Emory. He voted for Trump twice. Is that enough evidence to support my claim that's he's not that bright?
But they have big student loans! So they totally need incomes of $250k out of residency after all of their staff and facilities and supplies are paid for! It’s absolutely necessary that they charge about $100 per visit and have about 20 visits per day!

They only generate around $1.4 million in revenue a year, they’re barely scraping by what with those student loans and all!
 
It did not used to be this way. Under my state’s constitition, they are obligated to fund public universities and colleges at a certain percent of the cost of running the university, the rest to be made up in donations, fees abd tuition. The state has failed to meet that threshold of financial support for many years now, meaning that students must pay substantially more to earn a degree
That’s a problem with universities. Turns out when you give away other people’s money in such a way, it allows the charges to escalate unreasonably.
‘Other people’s money???’

Education is a public good. It benefits all of society to have an educated populace who are able to contribute more to society abd who are able to make better more reasoned decisions.

ALL of us benefit when we have people who are educated and trained fur vital roles in our society.

The benefits are to society. A decent society provides for the needs of its citizens.
Theoretically yes, it’s a public good. But realistically not all degrees benefit society as a whole. The problem is that there aren’t any guardrails to control tuition costs. Tax-supported universities, combined with guaranteed student loans has created a situation where colleges can increase tuition to rates that people would decline to pay if the had to make that decision themselves. Universities are taking advantage of goodwill, and leeching off of all of us.
I disagree: Society is benefited by having a well educated populace.

I don’t think that universities are leeching off of anybody. I’m a little biased given that I live in a college town and am married to a recently retired professor but honestly, public universities are struggling because there are fewer college aged people—and a bunch of fixed costs. Now state universities compete hard for students and set of that is offering a bunch of amenities that simply did not exist when I was in school—or even my kids. They also tend to be pretty full of administrators/admin support.

Public universities provide very necessary services to the public.

Hubby and I always laugh hysterically whenever we see a television or film depiction of any university, especially professor’s offices! I went back to university—twice—as an adult. I remember needing to meet with one professor in his office —which he shared, meaning his office mate had to leave the room during these conferences. The entire office was maybe 8x7. Max. No windows. Barely enough room for the two desks and chairs. Hubby’s was bigger and not shared. He had a file cabinet and shelves around the perimeter of the ceiling. No window until a couple of years before he retired.
A year of undergrad has increased more than 400% since 1990, versus cumulative inflation of about 250%. But having a bachelors today is of less value than it was then.

Education as a concept has value, but degree inflation is a problem. Tuition has far outpaced the value of a degree, and many degrees aren’t in and of themselves valuable.
Ah, I believe all education is valuable in and of itself.

I do not see the value of education as being how many bucks you can turn on it.
 
What is this thread about? :unsure:

Since it's all over the place, let me add a bit. First of all, I looked up the average age for when a doctor starts to practice and it's between 25 and 29, hardly middle age. Of course that varies as I read about an NP recently who wanted to become an MD and she was just accepted to medical school at age 70. One of my former doctors had a Phd in engineering and then went to med school so she was close to 40 when she started to practice. She was brilliant intellectually, but also a space head in many ways. I was tempted to add all the times I've been misdiagnosed or mistreated by doctors, but that would take up way too much room. I despise most doctors. I prefer an NP for primary care and I've only known two who weren't very competent.

Also, doctors don't heal anyone. They give advice and write prescriptions. There are very few I've known who I would trust. Some do surgery or other procedures etc. But, people who live healthy lifestyles and follow good medical advice are healed by their own behavior. Some surgeons are excellent, while others often fuck things up. So many doctors are assholes and many aren't that bright regardless of how many years they spent in school. Btw, one of the residents where I volunteer is a retired OBGyn doc and I recently found out that he spent time in prison for botching up abortions, like leaving a dead fetus in the woman. This happened more than once.

My bro in law is a dentist and he's not that smart, despite taking all those science courses required for his dental degree from Emory. He voted for Trump twice. Is that enough evidence to support my claim that's he's not that bright?
But they have big student loans! So they totally need incomes of $250k out of residency after all of their staff and facilities and supplies are paid for! It’s absolutely necessary that they charge about $100 per visit and have about 20 visits per day!

They only generate around $1.4 million in revenue a year, they’re barely scraping by what with those student loans and all!
Well of course all of that $100 goes straight into the bank accounts of doctors. D’oh.
 
That’s a problem with universities. Turns out when you give away other people’s money in such a way, it allows the charges to escalate unreasonably.
That's a problem with the right-wing. Turns out that when you make people pay for significant and expensive infrastructure that they would rather use without paying for it at all, they get all snitty about the payment model not precisely accounting their individual use and submitting them with an individual itemised invoice.

The fact is that the broad infrastructure that is provided by government is the fundamental difference between being able to be healthy and wealthy, and living in a third world shit-hole where only a tiny number of kleptocrats can have any kind of modern healthcare - and they have to pay to import doctors*, because their countries don't produce their own.

The degree to which an individual is responsible for the cost of providing such broad infrastructure as universities and medical schools (that is, the degree to which they benefit personally from the government funding of broad infrastructure, of which higher education is but a minuscule part) is very difficult to calculate.

So it is impractical to invoice everyone an itemised and detailed account for the stuff they used. This does not, however, make ot impossible to estimate who is benefitting most from this spending. One pretty good proxy measure is to simply look at earnings. Those who earn most income, likely are benefitting most from the existence of government, and of all the myriad infrastructural gubbins that we know is there, but can't specifically account back to an individual user.

Who is the ultimate user of educating doctors? Well, everybody. But you can't get rich if half your workforce are off sick.

Who is the ultimate user of a strong military? Well, everybody. But you stand to have more stuff looted from you when the Canadians invade if you have more stuff to begin with.

Dividing up the cost of broad infrastructure - of government services - roughly proportional to income, as taxes, seems to me like an excellent way to pay for these things. It is about as fair and equitable as it is possible to achieve without such absurdly detailed accounting that the overhead of paying accountants would represent the overwhelming majority of all national expenditure.

But of course, there will be those who would like this stuff for nothing (or who demand, absurdly, that they not pay for it unless they specifically and personally asked for it), And those folks will try to characterise this essential difference between the first world and the third, as "giving away other people's money".

It's a very stupid and selfish characterisation of paying for infrastructure.

Indeed, it depends on the insane notion that money is an individually owned commodity, which it is not - money itself is an infrastructural service. You can have your own money, of course; But good luck getting anyone else to accept it as payment for anything. If you want people to accept money, it probably needs to be backed by a government or a bank. Emily Lake Dollars or Bilby Dollars are probably worthless, but US Dollars and Australian Dollars are not.

In the USA, the vast majority of money is in the form of US Dollars. They aren't your money; They are the Federal Reserve Bank's money, and you can use them (or not) as defined by the Federal Government of which the Reserve Bank is a part. A hundred dollar bill in your wallet is essentially a government service; Take away the government service characteristic, and what's left has the same value as Monopoly money. One of the terms and conditions of your use of US money is that you remit a portion of the money that you handle to the IRS. That's not taking your money; It's requiring you to use their money in accordance with their rules for its use.

The problem that you are mischaracterising as "giv[ing] away other people's money" is, insofar as it exists at all, in fact a problem due to inadequately overseeing the bureacracy that funds education. If money is being diverted from its purpose, as defined in law, then that's a problem quite different and separate from "giv[ing] away other people's money". If government officials are derelict in their duty to obtain good value for the money they spend on your behalf, then that needs to be addressed.

But whinging about the existence of government spending at all, is at best pointless, and at worst counterproductive, as it helps government employees to conceal inefficiency, corruption, and graft, behind a smoke-screen of "It's not my money so I needn't care if it is wasted, despite the avoidance of such waste being a central competency of my job".











* Of course, there are plenty of doctors born in the third world who practice in the countries of their birth - but the good ones, as used as personal physician to His Majestic Excellency, Grand President and Supreme Ruler For Life, General Wonthelastcoup, all imported their education as doctors from other countries. Even if the good General employs doctors born locally, it's a shoo-in that they went abroad to study, and in the hugely unlikely event that they went to a local medical school, the textbooks and teachers were assuredly imports.
 
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What is this thread about? :unsure:

Since it's all over the place, let me add a bit. First of all, I looked up the average age for when a doctor starts to practice and it's between 25 and 29, hardly middle age. Of course that varies as I read about an NP recently who wanted to become an MD and she was just accepted to medical school at age 70. One of my former doctors had a Phd in engineering and then went to med school so she was close to 40 when she started to practice. She was brilliant intellectually, but also a space head in many ways. I was tempted to add all the times I've been misdiagnosed or mistreated by doctors, but that would take up way too much room. I despise most doctors. I prefer an NP for primary care and I've only known two who weren't very competent.

Also, doctors don't heal anyone. They give advice and write prescriptions. There are very few I've known who I would trust. Some do surgery or other procedures etc. But, people who live healthy lifestyles and follow good medical advice are healed by their own behavior. Some surgeons are excellent, while others often fuck things up. So many doctors are assholes and many aren't that bright regardless of how many years they spent in school. Btw, one of the residents where I volunteer is a retired OBGyn doc and I recently found out that he spent time in prison for botching up abortions, like leaving a dead fetus in the woman. This happened more than once.

My bro in law is a dentist and he's not that smart, despite taking all those science courses required for his dental degree from Emory. He voted for Trump twice. Is that enough evidence to support my claim that's he's not that bright?
But they have big student loans! So they totally need incomes of $250k out of residency after all of their staff and facilities and supplies are paid for! It’s absolutely necessary that they charge about $100 per visit and have about 20 visits per day!

They only generate around $1.4 million in revenue a year, they’re barely scraping by what with those student loans and all!
You seem to be conflating doctors fresh out of training with established physicians creating their own practice office. That rarely happens.

A $100,000 loan at the standard interest rate and at the required 8 year term comes out to over $1,400 per month. $200,000 is over $2,800. Both figures are way more than most people's house payments.
 
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You seem to be conflating doctors fresh out of training with established physicians creating their own practice office. That rarely happens.

A $100,000 loan at the standard interest rate and at the required 8 year term comes out to over $1,400 per month. $200,000 is over $2,800. Both figures are way more than most people's house payments.
Adding to this:
AI Sparkles AI Generated Content

AI Overview


Establishing a single-doctor (solo) medical practice typically costs between $70,000 and $100,000+ for a lean primary care or mental health setup, while specialized or surgical practices can range from $150,000 to $500,000+. [1, 2, 3]

Key Startup Cost Categories
  • Office Space & Build-Out: Ranging from $2,000 to $3,400 monthly for rent (approx. 2,000 sq. ft.), with initial lease deposits or build-out costs adding thousands more depending on location. [1, 2]
  • Medical Equipment: $5,000 to $15,000 for basic exam tables and essentials if purchasing used or leasing; high-tech specialties require significantly more. [1, 2, 3]
  • Electronic Health Records (EHR) & IT: $5,000 to $25,000 for initial setup, data integration, and software licensing fees. [1, 2, 3]
  • Staffing & Payroll: $3,000 to $5,000 monthly for an initial cross-trained medical assistant or receptionist. [1, 2]
  • Legal, Accounting & Professional Fees: $1,500 to $5,000 for business formation, licenses, credentialing, and tax setup. [1, 2]
  • Insurance: $5,000 to $15,000 annually for medical malpractice insurance, plus roughly $1,000 annually for general liability. [1]
 
What is this thread about? :unsure:

Since it's all over the place, let me add a bit. First of all, I looked up the average age for when a doctor starts
Also, doctors don't heal anyone. They give advice and write prescriptions. There are very few I've known who I would trust. Some do surgery or other procedures etc. But, people who live healthy lifestyles and follow good medical advice are healed by their own behavior. Some surgeons are excellent, while others often fuck things up. So many doctors are assholes and many aren't that bright regardless of how many years they spent in school. Btw, one of the residents where I volunteer is a retired OBGyn doc and I recently found out that he spent time in prison for botching up abortions, like leaving a dead fetus in the woman. This happened more than once.
My experience is much different than yours. I lived a very healthy lifestyle - refereed soccer for over 20 years at the youth, hs, and college. I’ve had cancer scares, cancer, vertigo, heart disease, and other ailments, all of which were superbly handled by doctors, physician assistants and nurses. I’m extremely grateful ti every single one.
 
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