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The Economics of Physician Pay in the United States
Today we break open the quiet formula that governs every physician’s life: the RVU.
Invented in the late 1980s to price medical work like a mechanical task, RVUs still dictate schedules, salaries, bonuses — and the very shape of care.
This episode exposes how RVUs distort modern medicine by rewarding transactions over outcomes, rescue over prevention, and complexity over stability. We explore why doctors aren’t paid for what works, only for what can be billed — and how private equity has accelerated the shift toward treating health as a commodity.
RVUs aren’t broken. They’re obsolete.
The skinny
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