jimmymcgee73

Do unions often work to lower wages paid to their members? Maybe now you’re understanding why so few physicians are members of the AMA? They do not care about (and quite literally do not represent) physicians.

Ah yes the doctor’s union which has a ~15% membership rate to said union. What a powerful union, when is the last time they had a strike?

Google “number medical students over time”

Then google “number residency slots over time”

Then notice how both of them have been increasing significantly over time.

Then compare the income percentile for doctors in US vs say Canada, Australia etc. all are top 1-3%. Doctors are paid well relative to median salary in every first world country.

Then google “physician percent healthcare costs” and learn that physician pay is about 8-10% of total healthcare spending. Then realize about 40% of that $ immediately goes back to the government via various taxes, so even if you paid physicians nothing you’d only save about 5% of healthcare spending.

Do you not try to verify any information you read before confidently regurgitating it at a later point? You really should…

I’m not saying you’re wrong (I have no experience), but wouldn’t it be useful to test this model out for yourself before passing judgment on it?

I’ll add the caveat that motivation matters a lot.

The kids that worked hard because they wanted to be successful? They’re all very successful, even if some didn’t go to top colleges.

The kids that worked hard because they liked the work? Happy, but financially mediocre on average. How much does a history major at Harvard make? Not much. Not a bad life though.

The kids that worked hard because they felt forced to work hard? Most likely to burn out or get into hard drugs.

For what it’s worth as a fellow member of the 1% I hope my kids end up in camp #2.

Right, there are operations that are sometimes performed with minimal (or sometimes even 0 sedation) with just a nerve block (regional anesthesia) which impairs sensation locally (like you get when a dentist numbs up your mouth, but you’re still awake). They have the same rates of cognitive dysfunction afterward.

Anesthesiologist here: what you are referring to exists, but is rare and is not related to general anesthesia (equally likely in operations performed while patients are awake with regional anesthesia or under general anesthesia). It is more people with pre-existing cognitive dysfunction that are elderly do not handle the inflammatory milieu generated by surgery. You can Google “postoperative cognitive dysfunction” for more information.

Any phenomenon more widespread than the above is simply not supported by scientific studies to date.

I’m honestly a bit disappointed to find this comment on hacker news, as I feel the level of discourse here is usually higher. I wish you all the best and hope you recover from whatever you’re experiencing, but this is frankly fearmongering.

You realize semaglutide wasn’t the first GLP-1 right?

The first GLP-1 was exenatide, invented in America and released in collaboration with Eli Lilly.

In addition tirzepatide and retatrutide are not “just” GLP-1s. You frankly do not know what you are talking about.

If LLMs truly cause widespread replacement of labor, you’re screwed just as much as anyone else. If we hit say 40% unemployment do you think people will care you own your home or not? Do you think people will care you have currency or not? The best case outcome will be universal income and a pseudo utopia where everyone does ok. The “bad” scenario is widespread war.

I am one of the “haves” and am not looking forward to the instability this may bring. Literally no one should.

The average response time is considerably shorter than 10 minutes in many metro areas. In Los Angeles the average is 6 minutes and 14 seconds, with 98.8% of responses in under 15 minutes.

For reference in Los Angeles, a notoriously traffic filled metropolitan area, the average response time for a life threatening ambulance call is 6 minutes and 14 seconds and 98.8% in under 15 minutes

I am an anesthesiologist. This is false. We bill 1 unit every 15 minutes, and then we receive startup units on top. A gall bladder removal is 7 units and often takes an hour. So we would receive 11 units for that hour. If it takes 2 hours we would get 15 units. If it takes 3 hours we would get 19 units.

There is no cap for billing, but realize when an operation goes long it not only means we make less per hour, but there is also usually a good reason for that. Even if there isn’t a good reason, it’s not like we have control over how fast a surgeon operates.