| HN Mirror

Indeed! As she was applying for residency programs, my wife briefly entertained the thought of becoming a radiologist because boy, they made a load of money for 8am-2pm work! We both are 100% self-aware that healthcare industry has a lot of bad actors including doctors, pharma companies, hospital admins, lawyers and pretty much everyone involved.

If residents cry about 60+ hours/week of work during the first year residency, I don't pity them much. First of all, the hours aren't really that bad even for a hospital in metro NY area (speaking from my wife's residency experience so far). In our home country, residents have it worse; my wife had night float EVERY THREE DAYS over there. In the US, it's at most four times a month! Second of all, the "grueling hours" are for the first year of residency (in fact, during those hours, there's not much happening especially in night floats, so you can get decent sleep) and after that, things got much, much better. Sacrificing just one year and paying exorbitant exam/school fees--in the region of ~$250K total--to make $250K as starting salary is TOTALLY WORTH it. If any of the doctors complain that they are debt-laden, they are either fiscally irresponsible or are simply exaggerating. They can repay $250K debt + interest in less than 5 years if they really want to. Of course, it's much easier to use these (debt and hours/years sacrificed) as excuses to justify their pay.

If the doctors are true and honest, they should be advocating AMA to relax the residency and medical school requirements. No more than five years total (no undergrad necessary) is needed to treat garden variety problems. Then each specialty/fellowship can take however long it needs to take. But AMA and its leechers (KAPLAN, ECFMG, USMLE, FSMB, etc.) won't allow that because they make loads of money from exam and preparation fees. Everything about healthcare is business now and whether it is good or bad depends on one's moral compass (and how strongly one feels about capitalism).