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Doctor’s salary only accounts for a small fraction of healthcare spending, so it certainly isn’t the cause. However my wife is a doctor who is fellowship train
by learc83 5y ago
Doctor’s salary only accounts for a small fraction of healthcare spending, so it certainly isn’t the cause.
However my wife is a doctor who is fellowship trained, so she didn’t start making real money until she was 32. But she made a good bit above the median salary for many years before that. She also doesn’t feel like she sacrificed her 20s. She had plenty of fun, although she says med school was much harder than her engineering degree.
And now she makes much more than I do as a principal engineer, and she works less than 30 hours a week.
She doesn’t have to worry about interview prep or job hopping. She has absolute job security in any economy. She gets paid for continuing education. She is highly respected (people are much more impressed that I married a doctor than that I’m a principal engineer lol).
There is a legal framework protecting her autonomy and decision making at work. Not even the CEO of the hospital can overrule her.
In short, she is almost completely above the rat race, and is a true professional in ways that we (software engineers ) are not.
I would 100% recommend our children become doctors.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoWhat year did your wife start working? I expect doctors to get squeezed much harder in the coming years. It is go big or go home everywhere, so from the doctors I know, in order to compete you have to join healthcare group, where you will eventually become a cog in the machine frequently owned by PE groups. They are in turn competing with bigger MCOs, hospital groups, etc. On the other side, politicians are doling out what responsibilities that were previously restricted to doctors to nurse practitioners and physician's assistance, effectively using 1 doctor's license (and liability) to increase the supply of healthcare (effectively lowering the quality of healthcare since you are no longer being seen by a doctor).
- hellisothers 5y agoSeems like a problem across all sectors, as I get closer to staff at a FANNGy company I hear from others it’s getting harder or the bar is becoming higher as just more people technically qualified try for it. https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-overproduction-of-elites/ https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-overproduction-of-...
- learc83 5y ago2018. Those concerns are mainly dependent on subspecialty. If you’re in family medicine or internal medicine, it is harder to run your own practice these days. You still have much more autonomy than nearly every other employee in other professions. But I wouldn’t recommend my kids go into family medicine. If you’re say a pediatric emergency medicine doctor, or a maternal fetal medicine doctor, there just aren’t enough of you to be just a cog. Increasing the number of mid level practitioners has been happening for a while, but it hasn’t had much impact on salaries [1]. My wife isn’t concerned. 1. https://www.hindawi.com/journals/nrp/2012/671974/ https://www.hindawi.com/journals/nrp/2012/671974/
- mcguire 5y ago"Physician and Clinical Services" receive 20% of the total spending on healthcare. (https://www.cms.gov/files/document/highlights.pdf https://www.cms.gov/files/document/highlights.pdf and the CDC info I posted elsewhere).
- learc83 5y agoIt’s important to note that that is physician and clinical services. That’s very different from doctor’s salaries are 20% of healthcare spending. Edit: I noticed that you already mentioned this in your other thread. Also in the US physicians salaries are also directly paying for physician training thanks to large student loans unlike in many other countries.