(FP’ed 4:24 AM EDT. Thursday, October 18, 2007. – promoted by exmearden)
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Numbers.
They serve as the ultimate descriptive methodology. They can be misleading, but if used responsibly they also are vital to understanding the way the world works.
To me, they serve as a starting point for discussion.
I believe health care and education are the twin pillars of an equitable society. They should be the two most important areas of government involvement. The two numbers in the title of this essay – 5.5 and 1.12 – are linked to health care and education in a big way.
Any guesses as to their meaning? Details below the fold.
Doctors earn 5.5 times the national average pay:
According to a study found by Ezra Klein:
Physicians’ incomes are much higher in the United States than they are in other OECD countries. In 1996, the most recent year for which data are available for multiple countries, the average U.S. physician income was $199,000. The comparable OECD median physician income was $70,324. The ratio of the average income of U.S. physicians to average employee compensation for the United States as a whole was about 5.5. Germany’s was the next highest, at only 3.4; Canada, 3.2; Australia, 2.2; Switzerland, 2.1; France, 1.9; Sweden, 1.5; and the United Kingdom, 1.4.
There are no countries in the world paying their doctors better than we do in the US, either in total dollars or ranked as above using a ratio of pay to the national average.
Even without the empirical data, this is pretty obvious. All you have to do is drive around the nicer neighborhoods of your hometown to see the evidence. Doctors do very will in our society under our current system of proving health care to the masses.
Teachers earn 1.12 times the national average pay:
According to this official source the typical teacher with 15 years experience in this country earned 1.12 times the national average salary in the year 2000, which is the latest info I could find.
There were 25 countries in the survey. Here are the 19 countries scoring better than the US (I used the Upper Secondary figures, and the Lower Secondary figures are almost identical):
South Korea – 2.48
Switzerland – 2.18
Spain – 1.77
Netherlands – 1.77
Germany – 1.76
New Zealand – 1.70
Belgium – 1.64
Japan – 1.62
Greece – 1.52
Portugal – 1.52
England – 1.48
Scotland – 1.45
Australia – 1.43
Denmark – 1.35
France – 1.26
Ireland – 1.35
Finland – 1.23
Austria – 1.19
Italy – 1.16
Here are the five countries (out of 25) scoring worse:
Sweden – 1.12
Iceland – 0.95
Norway – 0.92
Hungary – 0.89
Czech Republic – 0.80
Out of these 25 countries surveyed, the US ranked 20th in teacher pay when measured as a ratio to the average adult salary in the same country. When measured in nominal US dollars, the ranking improved to 8th out of the 25 studied. The ratio figure is a better indicator of how highly any given country values teachers in its society.
The Meaning of These Numbers:
5.5 vs. 1.12.
It’s a very telling comparison. As far as I can tell, this is an ‘apples to apples’ view of average doctor and teacher salaries in the US. The four year gap between the studies means little since the comparisons are to the national average salary in the year of each respective study. Plus, a little reading on average doctor and teacher salary increases tells me the ratio would be slightly more imbalanced in 2007 rather than less.
But what do these numbers mean exactly?
Your mileage may vary, but one of the big implications to me is that doctors in this country are going to be very resistant to changing our existing way of providing health care. They were during HillaryCare, and I expect this would continue on the next go around. This is not a blanket statement on all docs, as I know many are at the forefront of the universal health care movement. But many, if not most, are probably pretty darn happy with the status quo.
Other than this observation, I am more interested in hearing what these numbers mean to the readers and thinkers here.
How do these numbers speak to you? What do they tell you?
Where to we go from here?
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So – let’s chat.
5.5 vs 1.12.
Almost a five fold difference. Are docs five times more valuable to our society than teachers?
Is this even the right way to look at things? I think it is helpful, but I would love to hear from all y’all.
you nailed it, Stranger
exactly… and have to add a bravo!
I don’t know if it is urban legend, but I remember hearing that at some point in China, doctors were paid by their patients as long as they were well. When the patient became ill, payments stopped until they were again well. Different approach to health care for sure.
What the numbers show is a society out of balance. When you throw in the numbers for the wage differential between Corporate CEO’s and the staffers the numbers become even more skewed. And then there are the lawyers. P’tui.
I don’t have an answer beyond saying that the whole structure of our “system” is unequitable and broken. People who have grown used to their status are resistant to change, as you note. They are not willing to accept changes imposed by fellow humans via policy and legislation. They will only seek out loop holes and other ways to avoid restriction. They will only respond to change when it comes from external causes, like market crashes or natural disasters.
This is why education is so valuable and important, and also why it has been pushed to the back burner in this country. The undereducated are more easily disenfranchized and manipulated by those with the most resources.
What do people “value” more? Their own lives/health or education and all its benefits. I think the answer is clearly that people will pay more to save their lives than they will to enhance their minds/their children’s minds.
Then, of course, you have the awful medical school model which nearly bankrupts students before they ever make a dime, puts them into indentured servitude, and has little or nothing to do with attending to patients and everything to do with medical technology and a mechanical model of illness.
I’m supportive of Docs earning a good living and think they should be on the upper end of the pay scale given the importance of their work. I also think the system is broken not just at the end user level, but at the training and development level, including screening who should become a doc o begin with.
Thats what the numbers say to me.
Can’t help it. Some know that I lost my family when I was very young, seven….lost my mom and two brothers and a sister. I was the oldest. My family was there for me when and how they could be but they too were in shock, complete and utter shock and as I traveled my own river of life it was my teachers who came for my spirit, my soul, and my mind and they wrestled it free from the quiet trauma. It was my fifth grade teacher that broke through the underbrush and by sixth grade I was in a district school for gifted students. His name was William Mays and of all things he was black. Grandma Vera always said he was my Willie Mays. He later became principle of Queen Palmer Elementary in Colorado Springs and played a very large role in district 11. Someday when I cross over I know he is going to be one of those first people waiting for me. I wish my Willie Mays would have made a million dollars because he certainly deserved it……jeez, now I’m crying!
Both of these professions are not suited to this ‘market’ system. Doctors are wrapped up in health for profit which is an oxymoron, they have ceased in many cases to be healers, and have become drug pushers and operators of machines that go ping. First do no harm, and ethics, are tossed aside in a system who’s main mission is profit. They have lost their art.
Teachers suffer the other way, they too are nurturers and should be well paid. The are shockingly underpaid. no one becomes a teacher to get rich. They are entrusted with educating our children and developing young minds to learn, and have been relegated to cranking out competitive worker clones for the corps. instead of critical thinker with humanistic values.
So for me it shows that our values are skewed so far in the direction of profit and greed that our society no longer thinks, of these services, arts, and skills as valuable enough to reward fairly. Heath care is paid because we have too, it’s a form of extortion. Teachers who rely on the community for pay get stiffed, and embroiled in programs that try to stifle their gifts. As both professions deal with the mind, body and spirit i feel that their pay reflects our disregard for anything other then Mammon.
I am surprised that Sweden’s teachers are so low on the scale. Is it because it’s socialistic and therefore not so out of kilter?