650. The Doctor Won’t See You Now
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Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner. Quick announcement. I will be doing a live event on Sunday, November 2nd in Washington, D.C. at 6th and I, which is a great room if you've never been. I will be in conversation with Jeff Bennett of PBS News Hour, celebrating 20 years of free economics and talking about what's next.
Hope you can make it. For tickets, go to freeconomics.com slash live shows. And now here is today's episode. Have you ever tried to make an appointment with your doctor and been told it would be weeks or even months before you could get in? Or maybe you were referred to a specialist and it turned out that the nearest specialist isn't at all nearby.
One obvious cause of this problem is good old supply and demand. We have around a million working physicians in the US, or one for every 340 people. That is a much lower ratio than other high-income countries. I'm telling you we're 180,000 doctors behind.
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