I have been a practicing physician since finishing medical school in 1986. The year after that, I started my internship at the Johns Hopkins Hospital on the Osler medical service. I remember how excited I was about my salary of $17,000 that year. I called my mother. She was so proud. It was plenty to cover my food, apartment, gas for my VW Rabbit and essentially nothing else since I worked all the time. By the time I finished my medical residency I was 28 years old and lived in Seattle where I was able to buy a house with my boyfriend (now husband) who was a scientist in a company that paid him a decent salary. My first job out of residency was with a healthcare cooperative, doing primary care and consulting internal medicine. After 4 years of that, I moved to rural Idaho where I have been ever since. For 17 years I was a "traditional internist" meaning I took care of my own patients in the office, took care of them when they were admitted to the hospital and provided some ot
The cost of health care in the US is higher than anywhere else in the world, and yet we are not healthier than our peer nations. In fact, in terms of such measures as infant mortality and life span, we don't measure up. Why is this? Many people involved in providing or receiving care have some pretty good ideas about what costs so much, and what we can do to reduce costs and improve quality. Sharing these stories is an important step in creating affordable universal health care.