Editor,
It is important to note in your revealing “the top 10 highest salaries this year at UNM” that every single top earner listed is a medical doctor. In academic medicine, it is important not to confuse “salary” with income; the annual personal professional income of such staff is in general much higher because in addition to their paycheck from UNM, they can bill for patient care by doing a run of the wards as consultants and seeing multiple patients each time. They can also additionally make megabucks by conducting studies on, say, an investigational medication, and getting handsomely reimbursed by Big Pharma that wants them to prescribe that particular drug, all from their office on campus.
Regarding your specific mention of neurosurgeons, the big reason for such high salaries is the acute shortage of neurosurgeons, especially throughout the country, even more so in underserved New Mexico.
Doctors generally are in short supply in New Mexico, and that is what lets them charge exorbitant rates, not to mention negotiating exorbitant salaries at a teaching hospital and medical school. But not once have we heard any level of government saying that a big percentage of overall health costs is made up of these extortionist prices by doctors and so need to be capped to have any meaningful change.
On the contrary, Congress has negated the very reasonable tying-in of doctor payments from Medicare and Medicaid to factors like cost inflation from a scientifically thought-out and very rational formula. Not only that, they are now making it permanent. It was not what they and doctors call “deep cuts” that they prevented. Deep cut from what? What is market value for a doctor visit or a doctor-performed visit, and does any consumer get to know? This is very relevant to the incomes made by top-earning doctor-administrator-professors because UNMH sees a lot of poor and elderly patients on Medicare and Medicaid.
Sincerely,
Arun Anand Ahuja
UNM student
