Medical doctors are liberal?

15 Responses to Medical doctors are liberal?

1. brandon says:

   April 7, 2010 at 6:09 am

   makes sense to me. For one thing most young people these days associate conservatism with being an anti-science religious nutjob, which means that those entering scientific fields would tend to gravitate more toward the democrats. Older doctors it would seem to lean more republican, as they are wary of frivolous malpractice suits, they pay craploads of taxes, and have experience trying to collect from medicare.

   Most of my young friends entering the medical field are hardcore libs.
2. John says:

   April 7, 2010 at 6:18 am

   Since medicine has gradually turned into a socialist enterprise, this doesn’t surprise me much. I expect doctor’s pay to go down closer to the European countries, which will make it even more liberal.

   http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/how-much-do-doctors-in-other-countries-make/
3. Polichinello says:

   April 7, 2010 at 7:16 am

   For one thing most young people these days associate conservatism with being an anti-science religious nutjob, which means that those entering scientific fields would tend to gravitate more toward the democrats.

   Actually, I think it’s the reverse. The students already come to school with their worldviews set by their background. Those with a liberal bent are probably more likely to go into a stereotypically sharing, caring field like family medicine. The OB-GYN number of 60% lib is just whacked! Add to this changing demographics, with increasing immigrant inflows and the feminization of the field.

   Also, if your field is dependent on government funding, then, naturally, you’ll be incentivized to support more government spending, but that wouldn’t really take effect until they’d been practicing, I imagine.
4. Cephus says:

   April 7, 2010 at 7:56 am

   I don’t know that it’s just doctors, it would seem that most young people tend to lean liberal due to the very liberal education most receive. It isn’t until they have some life experience and common sense brought on by age that they realize how ludicrous the liberal mindset is and gain a bit of sanity.
5. Spawn of Cthulhu says:

   April 7, 2010 at 7:56 am

   It would be a lot more interesting to see the results both immediately after these students have completed their residency training and then 5 years after that. It’s very easy to go into Medical School with left-wing opinions (social justice, etc). Several years of intense training in a major big city hospital where you see people up close that you never interacted with while in high school and college will significantly alter your opinions of reality.
   I’m an emergency physician and I have often said that while you may not start out as a conservative, after several years in the job you will end up that way. It’s very analogous to the definition of a conservative as being a liberal who got mugged.
   Thus, the apparent liberality of current medical students may simply reflect that of the typical university student. Unlike those that go on to ordinary jobs (which medicine definitely isn’t), the scales will be forcibly removed form their eyes.
6. Black Death says:

   April 7, 2010 at 9:26 am

   I think Dr. Spawn is correct. Medical students are famously idealistic, and maybe that’s a good thing. But after a few years in the trenches, their opinions tend to change. Staying up all night trying to get homeless drunks and drug addicts well enough to go back on the streets so they can do it all over again doesn’t exactly stoke your idealistic view of humanity. And if they get sued by some of these poor, misunderstood victims of society, they’ll quickly discover that it’s the conservatives who are trying to fix the broken tort system and the lib Dems who are in bed with the trial lawyers.
7. kurt9 says:

   April 7, 2010 at 12:30 pm

   My friends in the field tell me that they are fairly evenly split between liberal and conservative. What is true about most MD’s is that they have mostly liberal arts background.
8. David Hume says:

   April 7, 2010 at 1:24 pm

   spawn’s argument is plausible. but i would caution that there is a lot of evidence that political views tend to be pretty stable from young adulthood on.
9. Polichinello says:

   April 8, 2010 at 6:03 am

   Also, Spawn’s assertion, if true, only applies to emergency physicians. I doubt it will apply to pediatricians and other general practice doctors. From their POV, a lot of their problems would be fixed by a government check.
10. Spawn of Cthulhu says:

    April 8, 2010 at 6:56 am

    Actually a change in one’s views in the medical field happens to many who deal with the general public, especially those in indigent, inner city settings, as one finds in residency programs. A pediatrician who spends 3 years training in the Bronx, for example, will be very different at the end of her training than when she started med school at Dartmouth.
    Working at a hospital like that is often like working in a jail. Fortunately I work for a very nice and respected religious nonprofit, but even so, we feel like a cross between professionals and public servants (higher level EMS if you will, required by law to take care of everyone who comes through our doors).
    What would be more entertaining would be a poll of ER RNs and their political opinions. The ones that work nights especially can be extremely misanthropic.
11. cynthia curran says:

    April 8, 2010 at 3:47 pm

    Forget the inner cites back east alot of burbs in Calfornia have high numbers of illegal immirgants that get health care thru emergency health care. And maybe a lot of these doctors favor legalizating them and having a more ration system run thru the government to control the cost of emergency care.
12. David Hume says:

    April 8, 2010 at 8:00 pm

    What would be more entertaining would be a poll of ER RNs and their political opinions.

    in academia nursing professors are among the most conservative and religious. no idea if that’s distorted somehow, and, of course it’s graded on a curve here (other domains are really liberal).
13. Jon says:

    April 9, 2010 at 11:06 pm

    As a practicing physician for 13 years, I’d say that there is a good distribution of political preferences. The older docs are more “Goldwater Republicans” which, unfortunately, is a dying breed. I suppose younger docs are a bit more liberal. But actually, much more libertarian. They don’t want the religious nut cases interfering with doctor patient relations. And they are fearful of the growing power of corporate interests.

    There is no capitalism in medicine today. Doctor reimbursement is limited by medicare payment schedules and private insurance contracts. Meanwhile, their costs of staff, nurses, malpractice, rent, and so forth, is still subject to market forces. It is a recipe for financial disaster.

    Medicare pays much faster than any private insurance company, but at a significantly lower rate than private insurance. But the private insurance companies are notoriously difficult to collect from. In fact, inn the state of Washington, private insurance companies were so bad at paying medical claims, we had to pass a new law that required them to pay “clean claims” within a short amount of time. And, even with the law, it is difficult to collect from the private companies.

    Malpractice is a bit of a red herring these days. It is simply a cost that is shifted to insurance companies. While we would all like a system like that in New Zealand, where medical malpractice was outlawed in the l980’s. However, malpractice reform it isn’t a primary concern.

    If you ask physicians today about containing health care costs, the answer is always restricting the amount of money used in end of life care.

    Medicare spends too much on the very sick and very old. There is no limit to what Medicare will spend on somebody. Repeat, THERE IS NO LIMIT WHAT MEDICARE WILL SPEND ON SOMEBODY. But nobody, especially, Republicans will admit the fact that we all are going do die. It just a matter of when and how. Is it reasonable to put a feeding tube in and doing a carotid endarterectomy,and starting kidney dialysis on a demented 91 year old who can’t eat because of multiple strokes secondary to diabetes and smoking for 75 years?

    I make a very good living on providing excellent care to the elderly. But, frankly, I am tired of working 80 hrs per week, 24 hr call and weekends and having the highest tax rate of any American.

    So I challenge the sensible readers here to come up with a plan to revise Medicare in a way that spends less money. Remember, the tip of the iceberg in Medicare spending is just beginning.

    As an interesting note. The supply of physicians is about to take a very dramatic fall. This is because, most medical schools are currently 50-60% women. This is significant because most women physicians work part time and don’t work the 60 hour weeks or night call or weekends that most male physicians do. This will create a huge decline in the amount of hours per week that physicians provide care. This has gone largely unnoticed by those who are predicting future physician needs.

    It is very easy for families to ask for “everything to be done” for grandpa or grandma, when it isn’t their money. The real question is– when do we say “stop, it’s time for them to die.”?
14. John says:

    April 10, 2010 at 10:34 am

    So I challenge the sensible readers here to come up with a plan to revise Medicare in a way that spends less money.

    Here’s my plan. Assemble a group of experts (I’ll call it the death panel) to assign a value to various good like outcomes and life itself: Being able to walk is worth $50,000 a year. Being alive is worth $200,000 a year, ect.

    A 75 year old comes in for an operation, without which he won’t be able to walk. He can be expected to live another 10 years. 10 x $50,000 = $500,000. Does the operation cost less than $500,000? Yes? OK, we’ll treat you.

    Of course, what I’d really want to do is get rid of Medicare and have people pay their own costs, but if I were running an insurance company in a free market, this is how I would do it.
15. Jon says:

    April 10, 2010 at 8:57 pm

    Of course the “Free Market” insurance companies have a great deal. They collect your hard earned money in premiums while you are young and healthy. Then, when you are 65 years old, they hand you off to Uncle Sam (Medicare), when your medical care costs increase exponentially. It’s a great money making scheme.

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