[tkeAmarktinClss]

I didn't see anyone mention physicians.

The base rate of the profession is around 250k per year. Specialities are not included in that calculation.

Specialities are closer to 400k to 500k per year.

This is not natural. This is 130+ years of regulatory capture. Other countries pay their physicians half as much.

Not to mention outcomes are basically the same.

[SkyPuncher]

My wife is a resident physician. I'm a software engineer. I will out earn my wife for most of our careers - even with her at a $250k salary. My wife will eventually out earn me, but I doubt her career wages ($/hour) will ever come above mine. It's really easy to rip on doctors when you only look at a single data point without understanding the larger picture.

That $250k salary looks outrageous because you're ignoring all of the opportunity cost that went to get there.

* 4 years of med school. $40k tuition/year. $160k in principal total.

* 4 years of med school. No salary. $100k/year opportunity cost. $400k total.

* 4 years of residency. $60k salary. Yay, she's making an income. Boo, it's literally all going towards student loans. $80k/year opportunity cost. $320k total.

* Congrats, you're now an attending. You're living the "good life". Oh, don't forget that $160k of tuition, it's full cost is roughly $300k.

* $400k + $320k + $300k = ~$1M in the hole. That doesn't include a bunch of misc. expenses - exams, re-locations, interviews (residency programs don't pay for your travel).

During that entire time, my wife is consistently outworking me by 50% to 100%. Step exams, board exams, residency interview season (holy shit that's a stressful time), volunteering, research, etc, etc, etc. Even when she's an attending, she still has a bunch of things she needs to do to maintain her licensing.

This is also $1M in the hole in a critical part of building a life/savings. A good portion/all of that $1M could be going towards long term investments like retirement, college funds, etc. We're basically 10 years behind on retirement. That's easily $500k of interest lost.

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Physician pay is only 8.6% of health care costs [0]. You could cut physician salaries in half and the effects on your health care would be trivial.

[0] https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/compensation-issues/ph...

[bawana]

Actually, you are wrong. PCPs start at 90-100k salary. If you are quoting gross income before expenses then its about 200k. The overhead of running a physicians office is high. In terms of specialists, it's come down quite a bit. Just check the ads in the back of professional journals. 400k is more like the 70s.

Also you can look at the training of all the recent physicians, - many are from abroad. Same thing that the Silicon valley industry has been doing , hiring foreigners at lower pay. Education for physicians abroad is FREE. Whereas here you have to go to college (>50k a year tuition x 4) AND medical school (60k a year x 4) and then training 3-7 years at low income (40k a year) and crap life style.

[SkyPuncher]

FYI, all of the numbers you listed are close, but not totally accurate. See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23733575

That being said, the overall point is correct. There is a HUGE opportunity cost to becoming a physician. People would rather ignore that because it doesn't support their argument. It's much easier to cherry pick point-in-time data without looking at the larger picture.

[tkeAmarktinClss]

Please post a citation

[boublepop]

Perhaps you could post a citation yourself before asking it if others.

[perl4ever]

It's my perception, not saying it's necessarily universally applicable to the US or all types of doctors, that nobody sees a doctor any more. You see a nurse practitioner or a physicians assistant. There might be one actual doctor per practice.

So talking about what doctors make might be misleading.