"The cost of schooling is a personal choice and patients shouldn't be on the hook for it."
Of course they are? If you see a lawyer, the cost of their schooling is factored into the price you pay for services. If you pay an engineer, the cost of their schooling is factored into the price you pay for services. It is expensive to educate people with doctorates. Not to mention the cost of schooling may be a personal choice but if you want doctors in your society somebody is going to be paying for that cost so it'll be a factor in cost regardless.
Fortunately like we discussed above, the majority of the cost patients pay is in fact not for doctors so for the most part the patient is not "on the hook" for for a meaningful cost.
No... I see how you're trying to connect the dots, but unfortunately, you seem to have only a cursory understanding of economics. The salaries of lawyers and engineers are far more influenced by market forces because they operate in relatively free markets compared to healthcare. Also, no one says to themselves, "I'm paying my lawyer or engineer X amount of dollars because they worked hard in school and deserve it." That's an extremely childish worldview... It's well known that healthcare is a perversely distorted market and healthcare workers benefit greatly from a laundry list of curated market distortions including artificial labor shortages, a lack of price transparency, manufactured information asymmetry, institutionalized medical paternalism, etc...
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u/Concordiat 12d ago edited 12d ago
"The cost of schooling is a personal choice and patients shouldn't be on the hook for it."
Of course they are? If you see a lawyer, the cost of their schooling is factored into the price you pay for services. If you pay an engineer, the cost of their schooling is factored into the price you pay for services. It is expensive to educate people with doctorates. Not to mention the cost of schooling may be a personal choice but if you want doctors in your society somebody is going to be paying for that cost so it'll be a factor in cost regardless.
Fortunately like we discussed above, the majority of the cost patients pay is in fact not for doctors so for the most part the patient is not "on the hook" for for a meaningful cost.