Our February 2011 variety issue stretches over vast health policy terrain, ranging from the health care workforce to research ethics, pharmaceutical R&D, and mental health. We also anticipate some key challenges in health care reform-separate and apart from efforts to repeal the law, as evident in House Republicans' January 19 vote.We begin with a stunner: an unexplained gap-averaging Dollars 16,819 in 2008-in the annual pay of male and female physicians leaving residency programs and entering full-time practice. That's the conclusion of Anthony Lo Sasso and coauthors, based on their analysis of data from New York, home to the greatest number of medical residency programs in the nation (1,073).The authors report that the gap isn't explainable by predictable factors such as choice of specialties, work hours, or other characteristics. The gap shows up clearly within specialties: Female heart surgeons are paid Dollars 27,103 less on average than males; female otolaryngolo-gists, dollar 32,207 less.
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