I usually like Shikha Dalmia. But this article, castigating the AMA — which you will remember I am not a friend of — is stunningly ignorant.

(Note: part of this is based on e-mail exchanges with my dad, who is a surgeon).

First off, the AMA represents less than 1/6 of doctors, including academics. They are hardly a cartel although I will let on that they have too much influence.

Second, she claims:

According to a 2007 study by McKinsey&Company, physician compensation bumps up health care spending in America by $58 billion annually,on average, because U.S. doctors make twice as much as their OECD peers. And even the poorest in specializations like radiology and surgery routinely rake in around $400,000 annually.

This is not even supported by the article she cites:

Surveys by medical-practice management groups show that American doctors make an average of $200,000 to $300,000 a year. Primary care doctors and pediatricians make less, between $125,000 and $200,000, but in specialties like radiology, physicians can take home $400,000 or more.

In other words, the 400 grand she cites as what the poorest doctors make is, in fact, the high end of the range. Now that’s misquoting.

That article notes that our doctors make a lot more than doctors in other countries, which is a questionable point in and of itself. Even without any corrections for different economic systems, however, $100-300 grand does not seem to me an unreasonable salary for someone who saves lives, works seven days a week and is constantly on call for the hospital.

Someone also noted in the comments that she conveniently takes the cost of physician compensation from one source, then cherry-picks a figure for defensive medicine from another. That’s Michael Moore territory.

Dalmia’s article is poorly researched bashing of a political organization she doesn’t like that, not coincidentally, manages to slag all doctors in the process. This is something I expect from Daily Kos, not Reason and not Forbes.

Slowly, the docs begin to fight back. I share the frustration. What you hear from the media, the pundits and the politicians has nothing to do with how healthcare is actually practiced.

Look, I’m not going to say the US healthcare system doesn’t need fixing. But this makes one of the stupidest points I’ve ever read.

Americans spend around one in every six dollars on healthcare. But, in aggregate, they’re not getting much bang for their buck. People in the United States are as likely to die from diseases like lung cancer as citizens in all OECD countries – which, on average, spend less than half as much per capita.

Lung cancer is one of the deadliest cancers out there, with a five-year survival rate of about 15%. Patients typically have less than two years to go when its diagnosed, partially because it’s difficult to detect early. The US does have a better lung cancer survival rate in Europe, but the improvement is small, a few percentage points. But that’s because of the deadliness of the cancer, not an inadequacy of the system. You could have the best healthcare system in the world and the survival rate would still be minimal. Using lung cancer survival rates as proxy for healthcare quality is like using the survival rate for suicide by bazooka.

In the meantime, US heart attack, cancer and stroke survival rates — treatable conditions — lead the world by quite a bit.

Nice try, Foreign Policy. Go back to square one.

Update: Just to show I’m bipartisan in my bashing, the WSJ points out that our huge healthcare system employs a lot of people and generates a lot of income. That’s true; but it’s a Broken Window Fallacy. You could just as well argue that we should stimulate the economy by giving everyone cancer. The worth of the healthcare system is not how much money it spends but how much it improves peoples lives. A more efficient system would create just as much health improvement while freeing up resources to find alternative energy, develop better iPods or create a summer movie that doesn’t suck.

Update: More on healthcare from Paglia.