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> A concrete example: I've had a resident do a checkup while I was in the hospital. If they hadn't done it, a fully trained doctor making a lot more per hour would have needed to. You're assuming that, in the absence of the resident, they'd be hiring an additional attending physician. In reality, they'd just have a smaller staff, and you'd have to wait longer, the doctor would have to work longer/harder/faster, etc to cover the same patient load. Hiring a resident doesn't bring in additional revenue. Insurers don't reimburse more per patient just because an additional physician was involved. Hiring a resident doesn't bring more patients in the door, because that's not the bottleneck for hospitals anyway. It does increase costs, because it's an additional person on staff - they have to pay them an extra $51,000/year, plus 25% of the cost of an additional attending physician to supervise them (and three other residents), plus taxes, plus health insurance, plus insurance to practice medicine, plus licensing fees, and so on. > Did the hospital lose money on that checkup? Probably not, unless you're on Medicare or Medicaid - in which case, yes, they do lose money on you on a per-patient, per-service basis. |