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> Relative to the income received after qualifying, the debt incurred during training is not so burdensome. That article you linked to cites the average debt o

• pcrh 12y ago
  That is how investment works. You invest money in order to gain a highly lucrative career. Your first link does not show numbers much different from the previous article linked. Your second link bemoans that a $100K income (which is below the median for qualified physicians) "goes pretty quick" -- try telling that to the average American worker. The reddit link doesn't contain anything substantive. You state that the pay during residencies and fellowships is really low, but in fact it is higher that the median US wage. Qualifying as a physician in the US is one of the most secure ways to earn a comfortable well above average income worldwide -- US physicians really have nothing to complain about when it comes to finances.
  • chimeracoder 12y ago
    > Your first link does not show numbers much different from the previous article linked. Correct. I cited that link because it more clearly shows that those numbers refer to the debt upon graduation from medical school, not the date at which the income numbers in the previous article become relevant (which comes several years after the completion of residency). I'm not sure why you selectively quote that one phrase from the second link (which in context is not saying that $100K isn't a lot; it's really just a warning about how much worse it is to triple the principal on a debt with compound interest), and yet ignore the clear evidence that it does, in fact, take decades to pay off the debt (and even then, that's just to break even). Even if you don't like those particular links, it's pretty easy to corroborate that elsewhere. Earning a "comfortable income" on paper is not very meaningful when you could be well into your fifties and still be behind where you would have been at 25 had you dropped out of college at 20 and gone to work for Wall Street or a startup, or pretty much any other high paying job that someone of that caliber would also be capable of. On top of that, as I already said, the income statistics for private practice physicians don't factor in many of the costs associated with maintaining a practice, so it's more like talking about the revenue of a small business than the income of an individual. Medicine isn't really that secure a job anymore, either, contrary to popular belief. That's why so many practices have had to close in the last ten years, and why physician salaries, for those not in private practice, have been on a sharp decline. It's really popular to hate on physicians for supposedly making a lot of money for a supposedly cushy job. That may have been true once, but it's not really true anymore, and it's becoming even less and less true very quickly.
    • pcrh 12y ago
      I am very familiar with the medical profession, I teach them and review their grant and fellowship applications. In no way conceivable is the debt incurred by medical students an irrational one, unless they hate medicine and wish they had chosen a different career. The only way on which the debt incurred becomes an unusual burden is if they don't subsequently obtain positions commensurate with their training. Comparing the income of Wall Street traders to physicians is bogus, the skills required are very different , and Wall Street is much more competitive and cut-throat than the medical profession is. "It's really popular to hate on physicians for supposedly making a lot of money for a supposedly cushy job." Medicine is still a very well paid and cushy job: try asking qualified lawyers doing document review for $20 an hour with equivalent debt to newly trained physicians what they think of the matter.