Casey Cook10 said:it still feels pretty low, I guess.
Not even mentioning how those 8 twenty-four-hour shifts mean you're basically never home. And in those high-demand specialties—which is going to be most of them soon—you usually end up staying to work after your shift is over anyway (for free, obviously). I really wonder what happens when federal regulations push for shorter work weeks and who's actually going to follow them.
It just ends up tanking the quality of healthcare too. Doctors really need decent pay for one simple reason—so they don't have to worry about anything except medicine. I bet 99% of them would totally be fine with making maybe $4,000 or $4,500 a month if they only had to pull 2 or 3 shifts a month. Of course, there'll always be people who want way more, but that's a whole different story, I suppose.
The debate over salaries for any profession honestly never ends. I don't think there's a single job out there where someone would stand up and say, "You know what? I make plenty, I'm totally good with this, everything is perfect."
Everyone, and I mean everyone, tells that same "it's never enough" story, whether they're tradespeople, professors, cops, military, or civil servants—including doctors.
And look, there's nothing wrong with that; it's completely fair.
But how realistic are some of these numbers given the current state of the US economy compared to all the other groups sucking up taxpayer money?
I can see why someone in public service might feel underpaid if they're pulling in maybe $3,500 a month net. But how do you defend that when the average American income is way lower, and even that's a number most government workers can only dream of? Not to mention, for that kind of money, most people wouldn't even show up for half the month, let alone the 8 days we were talking about earlier.
Sure, we can talk about the years of schooling, the sacrifices, the specializations, the endless training... all of that counts, but my take is that's exactly why doctors earn twice as much as everyone else in the public sector, no matter how much people try to deny it. At the end of the day, nobody went to med school in the last decade or so without knowing exactly what the pay looks like and what they'd have to give up.
As for those who truly want to maximize their earnings through their profession, well, they've got credit lines, banks, leasing, and whatnot... buy your own scalpels, forceps, stilette, tubes, catheters, monitors, defibrillators... run ads on local radio or massive billboards... jump into the market, and if you're successful, you can make an absolute killing.
It's just like any other business. But then, you're solely responsible for your own success, without relying on a guaranteed lifeline from Medicare to pay you whether you worked or not.
Just a quick correction to my previous math. I heard recently that the base is now over $1667, so a specialist's pay looks like:
$1,200 x 2.04 (meaning over $2,500 $0.00 without any on-call pay, bonuses, or seniority) + 0.5% per year of experience + call pay + position allowances. So, for a young specialist doing 8 shifts, we're looking at maybe $3,500-$4,000.
Ultimately, I'm not against doctors making more money—far from it. I am, however, absolutely against the claim that doctors are underpaid when their income is already significantly higher than the average American salary.
