Physicians and high income

[Anonymous]

Why should we expect doctors to be any less driven by compensation than any other profession? If my doctors does the job well and is professional (with a bonus of personable), why should I care how much they are untested in earning high compensation (absent any indication they are making medical decisions to maximize profits, which is a different issue). I don’t ask that question of my lawyer, financial advisor, plumber, or nanny.

[Anonymous]

Looking at some of the underwhelming teachers my kids have had, I think i would rather spend my time with other doctors than other teachers, but that’s just me

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What if tuition is free with few years of public service.

Then maybe. But you can be a teacher after 4 years of college. The road to physician is much longer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hear my friends in family practice and pediatrics talk about income inequality all the time, more so when neurosurgeons or ortho folks talk about their million plus monthly salaries and luxury cars. It makes one wonder if money was not a big factor, would many of these people still want to help humanity?

PCP from above. If the question is whether I’d do medicine for teacher pay the answer is no. But I’m okay with the current level of pay (basically all doctors make at least 150k). But you have to protect yourself as the system will try to take advantage of you. I would never take a lower paid speciality and have a bad quality of life. That makes no sense to me. I purposely made the trade off I made to be on the lower end and fought and ensured that I worked for a system that gave me the support I needed to have a good work life balance (MA support, call triage) and made it clear that family came first.

I’m a teacher who got a full ride to college as a biology major and dropped out of pre-med to become a teacher. I entered college as a sophomore because of AP credits. I ONLY say this for everyone to understand I was not at the dumb end of the spectrum and this was a choice I made my sophomore year of college. Sure, you can say I was “weeded” out, but here was my plan. At the end of the day, I wanted the following:

Debt free schooling (college was paid for, why go into huge debt for medicine?)
The ability to have the same days off as my future kids
To choose a helping profession and work with kids

As I teacher, I earn around 120k now and have clearly been doing it for a while to earn that. In the end, I figured pediatrics would end up boring with the endless strep throat, ear infections and immunizations etc and it wouldn’t be all that fun. But teaching is pretty challenging each day and you get more of a relationship with the kids. If I chose pediatrics, I would have more debt, the crappiness of being an on-call resident and have to work year round. I’m still good with my choice.
That said, I think the way we do medical school here is pretty awful and could use some upgrades.

I had several former teachers in my medical school class so I agree but I’ll say that just being pre med doesn’t mean you would have gotten into med school. To really have chose teacher over med school, you’d have to have an acceptance in hand and say no I’ll be a teacher. Super tough to get into med school even with all pre med courses completed

[Anonymous]

My child and their spouse are both practicing physicians. I never hear them talk about their salaries
compared to other specialities. Who is your source OP?

[Anonymous]

I’m not the most die hard capitalist, but even I understand appreciate that extra effort needs to be associated with an extra reward.

Education is super important, but let’s not even begin to pretend that the rigor professional training of medicine or even corporate law is the same as teaching. People in those fields really grind it out for college + professional school + residency/Big Law. Doesn’t mean teachers don’t work hard, but it’s truly apples and oranges.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What if tuition is free with few years of public service.

I grew up in Senegal. When I graduated HS the government gave me a scholarship to study medicine at the public university in the capital city. I'm Senegal you start med school after HS. I don't know how sustainable that model is because I didn't realize how expensive med school was until I moved to the US. I didn't even want to be a doctor, I just put it as an option. I came here instead to study engineering.

I think we have good but under equipped doctors in Senegal. But I think American physicians are better though and def more productive.

My daughter wants to study medicine but I don't think we can afford it. If she knew French perhaps she could study in Senegal. But then unless she is one of a kind I don't think a Senegalese trained doctor can just hop on a plane and get a job here it's not that simple lol.

To answer OP's question, given the high cost of studying medicine in the US I don't blame physicians for chasing $$$.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Looking at some of the underwhelming teachers my kids have had, I think i would rather spend my time with other doctors than other teachers, but that’s just me

You clearly haven’t spent much time around doctors.

[Anonymous]

My daughter is 13 and she wants to be a doctor. She is averaging 98% in 8th grade with 100% in math.

My daughter is ruthlessly competitive and kind of heartless to be honest. She already told me she is going to be very rich and that's why she is working so hard.

I don't know what kind of doctor she will be, but I pity her patients lol

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My daughter is 13 and she wants to be a doctor. She is averaging 98% in 8th grade with 100% in math.

My daughter is ruthlessly competitive and kind of heartless to be honest. She already told me she is going to be very rich and that's why she is working so hard.

I don't know what kind of doctor she will be, but I pity her patients lol

Troll harder. You’re just the PP who said all her HS classmates who were interested in medicine were grade grabbers. Green is not your color, friend.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What if tuition is free with few years of public service.

I grew up in Senegal. When I graduated HS the government gave me a scholarship to study medicine at the public university in the capital city. I'm Senegal you start med school after HS. I don't know how sustainable that model is because I didn't realize how expensive med school was until I moved to the US. I didn't even want to be a doctor, I just put it as an option. I came here instead to study engineering.

I think we have good but under equipped doctors in Senegal. But I think American physicians are better though and def more productive.

My daughter wants to study medicine but I don't think we can afford it. If she knew French perhaps she could study in Senegal. But then unless she is one of a kind I don't think a Senegalese trained doctor can just hop on a plane and get a job here it's not that simple lol.

To answer OP's question, given the high cost of studying medicine in the US I don't blame physicians for chasing $$$.

Senegl? They have real doc there?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hear my friends in family practice and pediatrics talk about income inequality all the time, more so when neurosurgeons or ortho folks talk about their million plus monthly salaries and luxury cars. It makes one wonder if money was not a big factor, would many of these people still want to help humanity?

PCP from above. If the question is whether I’d do medicine for teacher pay the answer is no. But I’m okay with the current level of pay (basically all doctors make at least 150k). But you have to protect yourself as the system will try to take advantage of you. I would never take a lower paid speciality and have a bad quality of life. That makes no sense to me. I purposely made the trade off I made to be on the lower end and fought and ensured that I worked for a system that gave me the support I needed to have a good work life balance (MA support, call triage) and made it clear that family came first.

I’m a teacher who got a full ride to college as a biology major and dropped out of pre-med to become a teacher. I entered college as a sophomore because of AP credits. I ONLY say this for everyone to understand I was not at the dumb end of the spectrum and this was a choice I made my sophomore year of college. Sure, you can say I was “weeded” out, but here was my plan. At the end of the day, I wanted the following:

Debt free schooling (college was paid for, why go into huge debt for medicine?)
The ability to have the same days off as my future kids
To choose a helping profession and work with kids

As I teacher, I earn around 120k now and have clearly been doing it for a while to earn that. In the end, I figured pediatrics would end up boring with the endless strep throat, ear infections and immunizations etc and it wouldn’t be all that fun. But teaching is pretty challenging each day and you get more of a relationship with the kids. If I chose pediatrics, I would have more debt, the crappiness of being an on-call resident and have to work year round. I’m still good with my choice.
That said, I think the way we do medical school here is pretty awful and could use some upgrades.

I had several former teachers in my medical school class so I agree but I’ll say that just being pre med doesn’t mean you would have gotten into med school. To really have chose teacher over med school, you’d have to have an acceptance in hand and say no I’ll be a teacher. Super tough to get into med school even with all pre med courses completed

In my mind, that would have been a stupid thing to do financially. I had 8 semesters of free education. With a biology degree, the jobs aren’t that plentiful and many still required a masters. But with an education degree, the jobs were plentiful. Why would I make the decision to become a teacher after I only had a biology degree? That choice had to be made earlier so I could get the education degree during the 8 free semesters. Granted, I ended up double majoring, but again, you are stuck with the choice of earning money vs. going into massive debt. No summers vs same schedule as future kids etc. I chose earning money, a pension, summers off and time with my future kids. If med schools were publicly funded, I probably would have applied. You are right, who knows if I would have gotten in, but there is always those Caribbean schools.

My larger point is that other than the prestige of being a pediatrician/ GP vs being a teacher, it is a pick your poison kind of thing. I needed to be out of my parents house after college and teaching allowed me more stability at a younger age than pursuing a medical degree would have given me. If we need to widen the pool of doctors and stop importing doctors, publicly funding the program and providing more financial support would have worked for me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m not the most die hard capitalist, but even I understand appreciate that extra effort needs to be associated with an extra reward.

Education is super important, but let’s not even begin to pretend that the rigor professional training of medicine or even corporate law is the same as teaching. People in those fields really grind it out for college + professional school + residency/Big Law. Doesn’t mean teachers don’t work hard, but it’s truly apples and oranges.

Yes and no. Though the “rigor” may be more, the actual stumbling block is that the PRICE of those programs is astronomical at this point and therefore unavailable to middle class (not upper middle class, but actual middle class) people. It isn’t the intelligence/school smarts that is the blockade here, it is the price of those programs. Engineering is more competitive to get into for undergrad, and I would argue is where the actual smart middle class people go. Residency/big law is for smart people who come from more money. You will probably fight this idea because you need to think you are more intelligent than the great unwashed middle class. Proceed, governor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What a novel post, OP! Thanks for bringing this up again.

I think it’s Kevin’s grand mom

Threading the needle

[Anonymous]

My wife and I are both physicians and making $500K + some bonus of $75K/year. We also have $700K of student loans between us so high salaries are justified.