Glauc Talk: Is It Too Late To Start Med School At 40?

This episode kicks off with a listener email from someone facing a conundrum: she finds out about getting tenure within a few weeks of turning 40, all while wondering if she should ditch academia and go to medical school instead. Kristin and I dig into what it would actually take to start med school at 40: the family logistics, the physical toll of taking overnight call as you get older, the financial reality of avoiding debt at that age, and whether it's even possible to "test drive" medicine before committing.

From there, we get into an update on the health systems behaving badly that I've been calling out, including why I keep getting cease and desist letters from hospital systems but never from insurance companies, and what's really going on when hospitals fire independent doctors and replace them with more expensive locums. We wrap up with a couple extra questions: whether it's weird for a doctor to use their iPhone flashlight during an exam, and a genuinely tough one about whether you'd want to get tested for a fatal genetic disease like Huntington's if it ran in your family.

Takeaways:

• A listener asked whether it's worth pursuing medical school at 40 instead of pursuing tenure, prompting a discussion of the financial, physical, and family challenges of a late-career switch to medicine.
• Independent medical practices are increasingly being pushed out by hospital systems in favor of contracts with private equity-backed groups, sometimes at a higher cost.
• Corporate Practice of Medicine (CPOM) laws, like Oregon's, are gaining momentum in more states as a way to limit corporate control over medical practices.
• Will has received cease and desist letters from hospital systems for his content but has never received one from a health insurance company.
• Will and Kristin discuss whether they'd want to get genetic testing for a fatal disease like Huntington's if it ran in their family.

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