Pay Kevin MD Like A French Doctor (Or Get Your Numbers Straight Before Blaming Doc Salaries For Overspending.)

Whenever new physician salary data is released, reporters and policy experts often compare doctor salaries in the United States to those of other countries: most notably, France. But Kevin Pho isn’t pleased.

That’s because because, practically on cue, Vox’s Sarah Kliff — regarded by thought leaders an excellent healthcare writer, is “uncharacteristically” lazy in framing physician salaries through a biased lens.

She writes, “Primary care doctors in the United States, do tend to earn a lot more than their counterparts abroad. One 2011 study, which looked at doctor salaries from 2008, found that the average primary care doctor in France earns about $95,000, compared to the $186,000 that physicians net in the United States.”

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Harvard Policy Researcher Says Obamacare Will Inadvertently Break Fee-For-Service Model

In Washington, Amitabh Chandra stood before a roomful of economists, policy makers and health care experts earlier this month. As director of Health Policy Research at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, he closed a presentation about the slowdown in health care spending over the last decade by citing an article in The New York Times.

“Changes in the way doctors and hospitals are paid — how much and by whom — have begun to curb the steady rise of health care costs in the New York region,” the article declared. “Costs are still going up faster than overall inflation, but the annual rate of increase is the lowest in 21 years.”

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