Health Care Utopia's First Great Challenge

Welcome to Health Care Utopia, young doctor-to-be!

Now that you've completed medical school and post-graduate training, we've decided that you'll be the perfect candidate to join in our government-directed social experiment. You see, we've decided that all doctors straight out of medical training (irrespective of subspecialty) should make the same Perfect Starting Salary of $200,000. No need to fuss over medical specialty, no. We've taken those discussions out of the picture, because irrespective of the speciality you decided to pursue, everyone in Health Care Utopia makes the same starting salary!

Now, to keep it simple, you only have two choices about where to practice after you've completed your training: (1) Socialist Hospital in lovely city of Mount Pleasant or (2) Capitalist Hospital in the thriving city of Prosperity. To keep your decisions simple, every state in the Utopian Union has only these two cities. Also, we mean no offense, but you're just too green-around-the-gills to be subjected to the challenges of private practice and have no money to buy our required electronic medical record that holds the key to all health care payments in Health Care Utopia).

Now, the only difference between the two hospitals in which you will be an employee is their compensation model. These, we have learned, can be very sensitive subjects for our doctor-employees. Since we're not quite sure which model to impose nationally, young doctor, we're going to insist you become part of our Great National Experiment.

So here's the deal: Socialist Hospital pays all their doctors the same amount by pooling all their revenues and dividing them up at the end of the year evenly. This way, everyone is happy. Well, at least at first. If all the doctors work harder each year, we'll pool those earnings for them, divide it up evenly, and everyone makes more money! Isn't that great? No more fuss and muss with productivity bonus earnings here. If everyone keeps working hard, you'll all make a bit more money year after year. If someone is a slacker, well, you all might not get paid more even though YOU worked harder, but hey, this is Socialist Hospital! It's how they work. They'll be able to follow each and every one of your work schedules because they follow our perfect Work Unit measures and eventually fire the slacker-doctor, really they will. Now you might not make as much money as those guys at Capitalist Hospital, but you might have a life outside the hospital here. And you know what's great? I've heard some doctors in this model can even work really hard four days a week and sometimes just take the fifth day off (although some of their colleagues seem a bit perturbed by this, since they have to be at work when you're not).

Capitalist hospital, on the other hand, works on a slightly different model. At Capitalist, the harder you work, the more you'll make, irrespective of what your colleagues do. If you want to make a lot of money, just work harder! The sky's the limit! It's really simple at Capitalist: more Work Units means more money. So if you work really hard, take call as often as you want (even ever other night, if you want), and keep your clinic visits to just 5 minutes instead of seven, you can see more patients and see a TON of income! Be careful not to give too much work to your colleagues, though, or you might not make as much money since they'll earn those Work Unit points instead of you. The challenge at Capitalist will be if you want a life outside the hospital. In that case, your Work Units are likely drop quite a bit, a so too, your salary. I mean, that's the way it goes. But that's how things work at Capitalist Hospital: every man for himself.

So tell me, young doctor-recruit, which will it be?

-Wes