I truly cannot give enough “Fuck off, you stupid fucking twit” responses to this asshat. So if we had half as many doctors, it would be easier to get in? Man, that math just does not math!! (OK, in the US, at least, as of 2022 it stands at 38%, a bit short of 50%, but hardly insignificant. In primary care, it is about 46%, so much closer to 50%. EIther way, idiot, you are an idiot.)
I found this helpful statistic:
I can’t speak to the UK, but the problem in the US has to do with the high cost of medical education. By the time doctors graduate, they’ve racked up $100s or thousands in debt. Primary care medicine is one of the lowest paid specialties.
The math isn’t hard: make a boatload as a (dermatologist) or 1/2-1/3 as primary care, while paying back $400K over 10 years.
That’s why it takes so long to see one. Not the sexist bullshit splinted by this asshat.
Oh, trust me, preaching to the converted here. We have a horrible time recruiting pediatricians because with the $300-400k student debt and the (relatively) low pay, you would have to choose between paying your loans or living indoors. Even the guys who do a peds residency tend to subspecialize, there is a hell of a lot more money there. The hard drop off in the younger demographic bodes very poorly for the future of the field.
I was just thinking yesterday, after a medical procedure, that every single one of my medical (and dental) professionals are women, except for one gay man, and virtually all are women of color.
Bet this guy somehow also thinks too many women are not having children because they are working.
Same here, only I search for them on purpose. That chart above makes it clear how rare they are, though. The thought of losing them due to financial crises caused by the regime or healthcare network failures caused by corporate greed is enraging. I see people on social media every week reporting that their doctors are leaving practices or their offices are closed. It did not have to be like this, and now many patients are scrambling to find alternatives.
To be clear, I also made a point as well, but I do have enough specialist care that sometimes there’s only a choice of one.
I know a very nice doctor who is a man but currently can’t see me because he needs his own surgery. Leaves of absence: somehow not just for women!? 
The most talented interventional cardiologist I’ve ever worked with is a woman. I saw her thread a hair-thickness wire through one side if a beating heart to the other and catch it with a catheter the same size coming out. Bear in mind that this is with 2-D imaging. It was jaw-dropping. I asked her if she meant to do that. She said she knew it was possible but didn’t know if she could do it. It wasn’t luck. It was skill.
I am so thankful our kids after school program, run by the district and licensed by the state, does a summer camp. Cannot beat $200 a week. They do a pool outing once a week and a field trip once a week.
Our public school system does a similar thing. $140 a week. 7am-6pm. Breakfast, lunch, snack, and field trips included. Best deal in town. The only shortcoming is that it doesn’t quite cover the entire summer.
That is excellent! They do snacks, but lunch is our own. Which is fine. Kid wouldn’t eat a lunch from school.
I’m really grateful they take the state licensing super seriously. they could have gotten an exemption, but chose not to.
Well fuck. I don’t use this app or know anyone who does.
This could also easily go into the toxic masculinity thread. Sometimes I despair for most men. I often kind of hope my young daughter turns out to be a lesbian.
They asked a question near the end about trans men, and it shows indirectly how women’s health is not valued:
People have always joked that if men needed to have abortions, then abortions would be free and universally available. How much do you think the medical attitudes toward trans patients has to do with their trans-ness versus their maleness?
This didn’t make it into the book, but I wrote an article on how, once trans men become seen as masculine, doctors treat them differently, including around pain. One guy told me that he had horrible pain when viewed as a woman, and no one took him seriously. Specifically, he had a ruptured ovarian cyst that doctors were ignoring. And then he fractured his pinkie as a man, and doctors were like, “Let’s fix this, let’s get you pain meds.” That was just such a stark difference for him. And I heard this over and over from trans men: Despite all the transphobia in medical spaces, they also experience male privilege. When they’re viewed as men in a clinical encounter, their pain suddenly matters.
The last section is instructive in the same vein:
And how about you? What are you working on next?
I’ve hit the pause on hysterectomies, as important as I think the topic is. My next project is on how men benefit from abortion. Soon, I’ll be interviewing men who’ve been involved in an unplanned pregnancy about how they think about abortion, how it improved their lives. The thinking is, our culture clearly doesn’t care how abortion has improved the lives of women, but maybe people will care about the positive impacts for cis men.
So kind of like what we were saying before: If men had abortions…
The only time that the New York Times has ever paid attention to me and my pitches was when I pitched this idea. Every other time, it’s been radio silence, but then I’m like, “abortion and men,” and they’re like, “Yes.”
This is highly upsetting… trigger warning.