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I was wondering what the public thinks a physician should make per year. This is not loaded by any means and was just curious. Let's generally break up primary care and specialists, with a specialist being a cardiologist or neurosurgeon. Keep in mind that there is 4 years of college, 4 years of medical school, and three to nine years of additional training after med school for residency and fellowships. Also the work week is 60-90 hours a week, depending on call sharing and clinic hours. Most of the "no call" docs have 50 hours a week baseline time in the easy jobs.
Any thoughts? Obviously, ZERO is not a reasonable response.
Primary care?
Specialist?
I will check it out tonight- took the day off to watch high school golf. That is my first day off in 6 months.
Physicians should make what they make, what should happen is that the costs of PHARMACEUTICALS should come down (because we pay billions in salaries to sales reps when medicine should NOT be sold like that) before we even consider looking at the salaries of the country's only people qualified to cure the human body.
I create retirement plans for doctors who own private practices and they make about $250,000/yr, which seems fine to me, a doctor deserves to be paid well. I can't go into my Orthopaedic surgeon's office and just take his place without major disasters, but I could easily take over the CEO's job at my company (a finance company) because the staff does most of the work and the CEO is just a figurehead who makes decisions, they do not actually have to know much of anything specific.
In fact, I believe that other than inventors, doctors and scientists should be the highest paid people in society, they are the ones who fuel progress and allow us to live more than twice as long as we did before modern medicine/technology.
Sometimes doctors have an elitist attitude toward making health care more like a commodity, thinking that medical care is somehow more special than buying any widget or personal service. If schools were not required to associate with any guild or fraternity of doctors and could run their school as they see fit, these graduates could enter the marketplace and compete. Granted, their skills and qualifications might be lower than an official certified, bonified ADA member, but let the patient make the choice on whether to save money or not by going with a lesser qualified doctor. People are already doing this by going overseas for certain types of surgery, and their experiences are quite positive in many cases, comparable to our facilities (or sometimes better with regards to post-surgery care). Even knowing their rights to sue are severely limited, they still fly over to Thailand or India for great medical care. I can guarantee salaries for all doctors would decrease substantially as the artificial supply restrictions would be eliminated. As for folks recently graduating as MDs, sucks to be you! Shouldn't have overpaid for your education.
Why not have your cake and eat it too? Support tort reform.
Physicians should make what the market dictates. That is how it works with every profession. Everyone is paid what they are "worth". Many just hate to realize that they are worth so little.
You beat me to it. I second this answer.
That being said, I think we need more medical schools and should try to produce more doctors, nurses, technicians, etc. every year to increase the supply.
Sometimes doctors have an elitist attitude toward making health care more like a commodity, thinking that medical care is somehow more special than buying any widget or personal service. If schools were not required to associate with any guild or fraternity of doctors and could run their school as they see fit, these graduates could enter the marketplace and compete. Granted, their skills and qualifications might be lower than an official certified, bonified ADA member, but let the patient make the choice on whether to save money or not by going with a lesser qualified doctor. People are already doing this by going overseas for certain types of surgery, and their experiences are quite positive in many cases, comparable to our facilities (or sometimes better with regards to post-surgery care). Even knowing their rights to sue are severely limited, they still fly over to Thailand or India for great medical care. I can guarantee salaries for all doctors would decrease substantially as the artificial supply restrictions would be eliminated. As for folks recently graduating as MDs, sucks to be you! Shouldn't have overpaid for your education.
FYI, the majority of all the overseas surgeons have received excellent training in their own countries, many times from US doctors/programs or they came to the US for their specialty training. I wouldn't imply that their skills or education is makes them a lesser qualified doctor.
Physicians should make what the market dictates. That is how it works with every profession. Everyone is paid what they are "worth". Many just hate to realize that they are worth so little.
Few are paid what they are worth, this is the concept of "profit". It is impossible to profit if labor is fully compensated for their value (or worth).
You are paid what you can negotiate and contract to work for.
Why not have your cake and eat it too? Support tort reform.
Of course I support it. It would lower malpractice insurance and also the cost of health care in general. Either tort reform, or clear transparent access to exactly how much you can potentially sue your doctor for in the unlikely event of malpractice. This way you can easily assess your risk vs. reward.
I was wondering what the public thinks a physician should make per year. This is not loaded by any means and was just curious. Let's generally break up primary care and specialists, with a specialist being a cardiologist or neurosurgeon. Keep in mind that there is 4 years of college, 4 years of medical school, and three to nine years of additional training after med school for residency and fellowships. Also the work week is 60-90 hours a week, depending on call sharing and clinic hours. Most of the "no call" docs have 50 hours a week baseline time in the easy jobs.
Any thoughts? Obviously, ZERO is not a reasonable response.
Primary care?
Specialist?
I will check it out tonight- took the day off to watch high school golf. That is my first day off in 6 months.
I think there is not a human being alive on the planet that cannot live well on $250,000 per year. I think this is a reasonable cap for any physician.
If the government wanted to, they could wipe out their student loans which often amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars as well. I think that would be fair.
Few are paid what they are worth, this is the concept of "profit". It is impossible to profit if labor is fully compensated for their value (or worth).
You are paid what you can negotiate and contract to work for.
If people were "worth" more they could negotiate better compensation. If they can't negotiate a higher pay than they are simply overestimating their value to others.
If they say that they produce more value than what they are paid by an employer than they are absolutely right. Businessess would have no incentive to utilize employees if that were not true. Remember it is their choice to be a "tool" of someone else's business though. If they wish to make what the business does they need to start their own business. In other words, to reap the full "value" of their service they need to offer their service to the marketplace and not an employer. Thinking otherwise, as if they are somehow cheated, is simply not rooted in logic.
I think ALL professional education should be funded by the Federal government to the Doctorate level. Then medical doctors would not have to mortgage their souls to buy an education.
Under the current system I think 200K to 300K per year is a decent pay rate. A progressive income tax would pay for these educations by recovering the money from the hacks that can say, "I do four boob jobs a day at 20 grand a pop so, of course, I own a boat!" That was quoted from CSI Miami but gets the point across. The greedy would be paying for the decent practitioners.
When two guys in a car accident come in bleeding on stretchers and one has insurance and one doesnt...who do they treat first and who gets better treatment?
If there was uniform health care would it matter?
thats the point.
doctors deserve to get paid, but at what cost to the public?
should money be the deciding factor in wether someone gets help or not?
gets better treatment or not?
or is that selfish and greedy?
how can we carelessly put a price on human life like that and still pretend to care?
Doctors who are in it for the money have forgotten why we need doctors.
to help people...bottom line.
I dont care if my doctor drives a mercedes or a nissan.
as long as I get fixed.
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