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Thousands of physicians are already public servants. They work for the public health service, the veterans administration or they're members of the armed forces. Other agencies employ them too (e.g. State dept, Indian Health Service). They receive special rates and do pretty well for themselves. They certainly make less than if they ran a successful practice, but not everyone is interested in those sorts of headaches and risk. And there are other tangible (loan forgiveness) and intangible (training, travel, work-life balance) benefits to working for the government beside the pay.
note that public doctors work immensely less because they get paid less - if you work for the va it isnt uncommon to see 1/2 or 1/3 the patients.
that would likely spread across the whole economy
Fair enough and you can slot that into the intangible benefits category as well.
I'd also like to see elimination of the hard cap on student count that the US government imposes at medical schools at the behest of the AMA. It benefits all of us if every young student who wishes to become a doctor has the opportunity to pursue that. And it's only fair if the doctors make less, they work less. So let's get more doctors.
When I was a child, doctors who were established in their careers didn't work on Wednesdays (in addition to not working the weekend). Now many of them work 100+ hours per week. This feels untenable.
I've written about this many times but reminder: this isn't true.
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