Medical school in the US costs $278,455 on average.
| Medical Specialty |
2017/2018 Average Salary Offer |
2016/2017 Average Salary Offer |
| 1. Cardiologist (Invasive) |
$590,000 |
$563,000 |
| 2. Orthopedic Surgeon |
$533,000 |
$579,000 |
| 3. Gastroenterologist |
$487,000 |
$492,000 |
| 4. Cardiologist (Non-invasive) |
$427,000 |
$428,000 |
| 5. Dermatologist |
$425,000 |
$421,000 |
| 6. Pulmonologist |
$418,000 |
$390,000 |
| 7. Otolaryngologist |
$405,000 |
$468,000 |
| 8. Urologist |
$386,000 |
$460,000 |
| 9. Anesthesiologist |
$371,000 |
$376,000 |
| 10. Emergency Medicine Physician |
$358,000 |
$349,000 |
| 11. OB/GYN |
$324,000 |
$335,000 |
| 12. Neurologist |
$301,000 |
$305,000 |
| 13. Hospitalist |
$269,000 |
$264,000 |
| 14. Psychiatrist |
$261,000 |
$263,000 |
| 15. Internal Medicine (Internist) |
$261,000 |
$257,000 |
| 16. Family Medicine Physician |
$241,000 |
$231,000 |
| 17. Urgent Care Physician |
$234,000 |
$219,000 |
| 18. Pediatrician |
$230,000 |
$240,000 |
| 19. Nurse Practitioner |
$129,000 |
$123,000 |
| 20. Physician Assistant |
$109,000 |
$115,000 |
Strollen
5147
Very well said. It is extremely complicated and having a simpleton in the White House doesn’t help.
I missed this.
As I grow older, I find this to be more and more true about most things. With the caveat that it applies to what a political discourse can be as well, which makes things… interesting.
As opposed to $50 trillion with status quo? Seems a recipe for less debt.
Every Republican and Joe Biden.
magnet
5150
Yes, Medicare forces health care providers to become more efficient.
However, it doesn’t force anyone to take a lower salary. So typically, hospitals will reduce their physician staff and/or delay new hires. Simultaneously, they offset increased physician workload by hiring less-trained professionals to take on formerly physician-level duties. So now my kid routinely spends most of her annual checkup with a PA instead of an MD. The MD pops in for 1-2 minutes at the end. Nobody said efficient care was pleasant. And hospitals that can’t find a way to become more efficient do not cut salaries. As @nesrie pointed out, they simply close.
Meanwhile, there is a shortage of primary care physicians that will only grow more acute as boomers age. Cutting salaries won’t help there, either. If it were that easy, we could easily fund education the same way. Just cut all public school teacher salaries. There will obviously still be enough teachers, right?
Papageno
5151
The difference there is that teachers don’t get paid nearly as much. To the point that in high housing costs markets, some localities are basically subsidizing their teachers’ rents/down payments.
magnet
5152
You can substitute pretty much anything for teachers. Not enough money in the city budget? Just cut police and firefighter salaries! Is GM losing money? Cut worker salaries!
Regardless of the salary level, when less money is available salaries don’t generally change much. Instead, less money means a workforce reduction. And that’s usually accompanied by a drop in service or production.
Papageno
5153
My point was that there’s a difference between cutting pay to the point where people literally can’t live on what they’re making vs “I just feel like I’m worth more than that.”
But your point about the “stickiness” of salaries is good too.
magnet
5154
Even if you maintain a salary well above subsistence, it is very hard to cut salaries. Tesla didn’t cut the salaries of all its highly paid engineers, it simply fired a fraction of them.
The first hospital/tech company/municipality that chooses to cut salaries across the board rather than reduce its workforce will see its entire workforce flee. A workforce reduction might hurt, but it’s not utter suicide.
Alstein
5155
I’m a believer in the theory, but it only works to a point, though it would work more in the US than most places due to income inequality causing so much deflation.
I’d be willing to print money to punish the rich.
How does printing money to cause inflation hurt the rich?
The actually rich don’t care. They might squawk a little but fundamentally they have more than they need so it doesn’t matter if they don’t make quite as much.
The better than average but not rich (especially those near or in retirement) are hurt because prices actually matter to them and they are losing value on their savings. Given sticky wages I don’t see the very poorest really benefiting as prices rise.
The only people who gain are those who have chosen to go heavily into debt prior to the inflation. I don’t mind some help for college debt but I think there are better ways without subjecting other people to inflation just to punish a group of people who don’t really care.
Unless of course your idea is to punish the 9% while ignoring the 1%.
Assuming you are referring to Modern Money Theory, this is a quote that, while true, has been used well out of context.
Under current mainstream economic theory there are specific reasons why a high public debt is bad. MMT says that the debt doesn’t matter with regard to those specific reasons. There are, however, other reasons (related to inflation) that point towards a high public debt being bad even under MMT.
It’s not that MMT says that debt doesn’t matter, it disagrees with mainstream economic theory on the reasons why it matters.
Alstein
5158
Inflation is fundamentally a tax on saving. The rich have savings.
People in debt tend to be helped by inflation, as the real money value of their debt goes down (this assumes wages rise with inflation)
I’m generally not out to punish the 2-10% that hard. Those folks are a lot more likely to have earned their money.
wavey
5159
Re. health systems in various countries: one thing I’ve always assumed is that preventative / early health care was, amongst other benefits, a major cost saver - so if there is no barrier to seeing a doctor when you first notice something is wrong, or for getting regular check-ups, then treatments at that stage are typically less costly and more effective than waiting until an issue becomes an emergency needing an ER admission.
But I’m wondering, does the data bear this out? How does the US rate at this kind of care? (There seem to be lots of international studies from a brief google, but I’m not really equipped to evaluate their quality.) And if the assumption holds, wouldn’t a single payer or equivalent system in the US eventually lead to a healthier population overall, for similar reasons?
The question I’d ask you is this: does this affect the quality of your care? I mean, if the PA is doing stuff that a PA is qualified for… isn’t this an efficient breakdown of duties? I’m not trying to be snarky, this is a real question.
I agree that inflation is a tax on savings. But you phrased it as punishing the rich. Unless you are talking about a really huge inflation rate the actual rich might not like inflation but they won’t be punished by it.
The people who are actually punished are those who need their savings. I’m also less optemistic than you about wages going up with inflation.
Edited to add the last sentense and a missed period.
The US does have fewer doctors per capita (2.3 per thousand) than the EU average (3 per thousand), but not fewer than the UK, not fewer than Canada, not fewer than New Zealand, and not appreciably fewer than Australia.
They need not close. The issue isn’t that wages are too low, it’s that those hospitals are in failing communities, places with insufficient numbers of patients who can actually pay for health care. What’s called for is a real public health program, with taxpayer funding adequately subsidizing community hospitals and clinics.
As for this:
I don’t really understand it. You’re describing the health care I’ve gotten for my entire adult life. I’ve never been on Medicare, and I doubt your kid is on Medicare either. Are you saying that Medicare controls the rates on non-Medicare services and produces this outcome, and has done so for…30 years? Or is it the case that this is the way doctors want it, so they can maximize their profits by multiplying the number of patients they can ‘see’ though not actually seeing them? Cuz I kinda think it is the latter.
You keep talking about salaries, but the doctors we are talking about are mostly in private practice. They aren’t employees being paid a salary, they are owners of businesses taking profits. GP physicians who are actual employees are already the lower-paid ones.
Man - if you don’t have an active interest in the topic - these thread derails are the worst.
Is talking about an election issue / campaign position really a thread derail?
