Quote:
Originally Posted by SoonerCoug
Jay Santos: A lot of med students are in school or training until they are ~34-37 years old. My path is a little longer since I'm doing a PhD plus an MD, but it's not unusual for training to take about this long even without a PhD. During the last 5 years I'll be making ~40,000 a year while working 80 hour weeks. Most med students end up with $100K-200K debt on top of that. If salary is a motivation for career choice, there are much quicker and less painful ways to make six figures. On top of that, many specialists have a very difficult lifestyle throughout their career.
Do you really think doctors don't deserve a 6 figure salary with this kind of lengthy training?
Think about it this way: for many specialties, the period from high school graduation to private practice is longer than the entire period of kindergarten to high school graduation. For me, I'll have been in school and training for 17 years since high school graduation (not counting my mission)...versus the 13 years from kindergarten to high school graduation.
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A couple responses:
1. Many types of doctors are making $300,000 much sooner than your 17 years post high school. I do believe that number is artificially high due to the supply choke on # of doctors U.S. medical schools can produce.
2. It shouldn't take 17 years of post high school training to treat more than 50% of what you end up treating, if you go into private practice. We need a more flexible model where most issues are treated with people with master's degrees making <$100K per year. More complicated issues can be handled by doctors, and with the decrease in demand and increase in supply, prices will go down on that stuff too. Same kind of reform needs to take place on the facility side as well. It shouldn't cost $500 to set a broken bone after hours.