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Doctors should make a lot of money!

Johnny

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I often hear people bitch about doctors "making too much money" or "their Benzes and BMWs".

Well no ****ing ****.

What do they go through?

4 years of college, 3 or 4 years of medical school, their residency.

More or less 10 years of school and training.

All that hard work in school, paying for that school.

They deserve to get paid a lot. They need to get something out of it.

People don't go through years of school to make dog ****.

Now insurance companies on the other hand :soap


Thoughts?
 
Unless you go into a specialty, doctors really don't get paid a whole lot of money.

When you factor in schooling costs, opportunity costs of going to that school, and malpractice insurance, they're not exactly rolling in it. Granted, there's a far cry from the average doctor and pauperish TV doctors like Becker and House.

I consider doctors rather underpaid. It's nurses I consider overpaid personally. Then again, when there's a shortage you have to go by what the market, and supply/demand tells you. Same reason why teachers, as a whole, are overpaid.
 
Of course, a regional airline pilot can spend nearly as much on his education and enters the job market at a cool 20k/year. It's all relative :p
 
I often hear people bitch about doctors "making too much money" or "their Benzes and BMWs".

Well no ****ing ****.

What do they go through?

4 years of college, 3 or 4 years of medical school, their residency.

More or less 10 years of school and training.

All that hard work in school, paying for that school.

They deserve to get paid a lot. They need to get something out of it.

People don't go through years of school to make dog ****.

Now insurance companies on the other hand :soap


Thoughts?

Most people complain when they: #1 Can't afford whatever the cost might be. #2 would rather spend their money on other things they deem more important than their health and care. #3 don't realize where most of their money does go when they shell it out.

Most of the money does not go to the Dr's paycheck.
 
Thoughts?

My thoughts?

Try to be a social worker. 4 years to get a Bachelors. 2 years to get a Masters. Another 2 years of supervised practice to get a license. 8 years in total and tens of thousands in student loan debts in order to make less money than a school teacher. On top of that, they also have to pay malpractice insurance if they work as clinicians.

And social workers work with the most distressed, mentally ill, violent, etc. parts of the population trying to help them improve their lives.

I somehow find it hard to pity doctors.
 
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My thoughts?

Try to be a social worker. 4 years to get a Bachelors. 2 years to get a Masters. Another 2 years of supervised practice to get a license. 8 years in total and tens of thousands in student loan debts in order to make less money than a school teacher. On top of that, they also have to pay malpractice insurance if they work as clinicians.

And social workers work with the most distressed, mentally ill, violent, etc. parts of the population trying to help them improve their lives.

I somehow find it hard to pity doctors.

hard to pity . . . but you'd miss 'em if they were gone.

They're a necessity - like it or not.
 
I think the case with social workers is the relative ease of training. I'm not trying to downplay it, but I remember taking general psychology as a freshman. That class was a whole other realm of easy. I slept through half of it and ended the class with a 97% overall, including missing one question on the final out of one hundred. If this is a precursor to social work education, I'm not impressed. I also know that gen-psych isn't the alpha and omega of courses, but it's rather telling, and a legitimate harbinger to the difficulty of the program.

I think the low pay is a result of a lack of private sector employment in the field. Everyone I know in the field works for a county, state, or federal commission of some sort. They must enjoy the work, because I know what they make. Hell, I've seen part-time positions that require a MSW.

In the public sector, it's a cog of a giant system. In the private sector, it's just another collection of meaningless social science grads who coasted through school on a relatively easy subject. Much like teachers.
 
I often hear people bitch about doctors "making too much money" or "their Benzes and BMWs".

Well no ****ing ****.

What do they go through?

4 years of college, 3 or 4 years of medical school, their residency.

More or less 10 years of school and training.

All that hard work in school, paying for that school.

They deserve to get paid a lot. They need to get something out of it.

People don't go through years of school to make dog ****.

Now insurance companies on the other hand :soap


Thoughts?

Doctors operate in a free market and are paid salaries based upon supply and demand. There's no fairer way to pay someone. Here's some salary information: Physician Salaries - Salary Surveys

I'd say they must be happy with it, since people stand in line to become doctors. It is certainly one of the most prestigious careers, if not the MOST prestigious career, available.
 
Actually, with a sudden and noticeable drop in doctors, you could argue that laissez-faire wage determination is failing them.

Medical schools only allow X candidates for admission into the program per year. They provide their own crowding out effect. This is not a simple supply and demand problem.
 
Actually, with a sudden and noticeable drop in doctors, you could argue that laissez-faire wage determination is failing them.

Medical schools only allow X candidates for admission into the program per year. They provide their own crowding out effect. This is not a simple supply and demand problem.

Every profession only allows X candidates for admission into their programs.
 
Of course, a regional airline pilot can spend nearly as much on his education and enters the job market at a cool 20k/year. It's all relative :p

Yeah, for about 2 years or less unless he's a crap pilot. Once the dues are paid and he's evaluated, airline pilot salaries go up exponentially. Medical residents get paid crap and that's for 3 or 4 years.
 
20K?
That's it - 20,000?

My god that's terrible pay. That's what I'd expect a receptionist to be paid in a rinky-dink office - but a Pilot (or a Dr) getting paid that is bull****.

I consider a 'cool' salary to be one that you can support a family and a stay-at-home-Mom on without being terribly tight on money.
 
There weren't only so many positions in my accounting program, both undergrad and grad. If you got the grades and paid the tuition, you were able to do it.

Outside of medical and legal professions, I'm not aware of very many programs with limited acceptance.
 
Every profession only allows X candidates for admission into their programs.

The medical field's licensing and accreditation process is actually very different from most other fields.

Each law school has the freedom to decide how many students it wants to accept. If someone wants to open up a brand new law school, there are a relatively small number of hoops to jump through and the ABA can only place loose limits on the school's policies. In CA, you don't even have to attend an ABA accredited law school in order to take the bar and become a lawyer. The number of people who are able to enter the legal profession each year is entirely out of the control of the ABA or any central licensing organization. The practical effect of this is that the number of law graduates has been growing at a rate far surpassing that of new legal job creation, which means there are vast swaths of lawyers that are graduating without jobs and driving down salaries.

In contrast, each medical school is authorized by the AMA to accept a particular number of students each year. The AMA sets that number based on the number of residency slots that are provided for graduates each year. The practical result is that the AMA has near-total control of the number of doctors who enter the profession each year, which essentially guarantees med school students a post-graduation residency slot. One of the problems with this is that it places limitations on the number of people that can become doctors without regard for the number of people who are actually qualified. This is why the med school admission process is so much more difficult than that of other graduate programs.
 
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I'll make decent money once I'm completely done with school, but until then it's debt up the wazoo. You also have to build a client base in order to make the money, which isn't always easy.

I do think it's a sad demonstration of priorities that athletes make more money than doctors though.
 
I think the case with social workers is the relative ease of training. I'm not trying to downplay it, but I remember taking general psychology as a freshman. That class was a whole other realm of easy. I slept through half of it and ended the class with a 97% overall, including missing one question on the final out of one hundred. If this is a precursor to social work education, I'm not impressed. I also know that gen-psych isn't the alpha and omega of courses, but it's rather telling, and a legitimate harbinger to the difficulty of the program.

I think the low pay is a result of a lack of private sector employment in the field. Everyone I know in the field works for a county, state, or federal commission of some sort. They must enjoy the work, because I know what they make. Hell, I've seen part-time positions that require a MSW.

In the public sector, it's a cog of a giant system. In the private sector, it's just another collection of meaningless social science grads who coasted through school on a relatively easy subject. Much like teachers.

An LCSW has an education equivalent to that of an attorney. An in depth understanding of social policy, substance abuse, child welfare, group work, community organizing, ethics, crisis intervention, psychopathology, research, and so forth. A bit more advanced than a general psychology class. And if an intro class is a "legitimate harbinger" of how difficult a profession is, then I should have been a biochemist because Biology 101 and Chemistry 110 were a cinch. Sorry, but your argument is weak.

1 in 10 social workers work in the private sector. It is small, but it is also not even close to the highest paid. Federal jobs pay the best.

And don't compare teachers to social workers. You might as well be comparing apples to oranges. You can make a lot of money as a private teacher.

It is actually because of perceptions like yours that social workers are seen as nothing and deserving of nothing.
 
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"Deserve" is an emotional plea and has no basis of wages in today's market. I'd rather go by economics and statistics instead.
 
"Deserve" is an emotional plea and has no basis of wages in today's market. I'd rather go by economics and statistics instead.

You forgot the title of the thread is, "Doctor's should make a lot of money." This thread is an emotional plea.

If you reduce it to the numbers, then social work as a profession is one of the ones projected to have a high demand in the following years, particularly in gerontology and health care due to baby boomers getting ready to retire. However, even with high demand, the work pay is artificially low. It's like nursing was a decade back, and in fact, many nurses are now being paid to get a degree in social work so that they can perform both duties.

The problem is you can't treat the job market under the supply and demand principles of economics when it comes to helping professions. Clinicians, whether they are medical or mental health, are obligated to provide care to those who can't afford it. Altruism is what ultimately puts the cap on how much they can earn. The more altruistic a profession is, the less money per years of education someone is going to receive for doing it. Hence, the market dictates that it is stupid for doctors to go into medicine to make a lot of money, just as it would be stupid for social workers to go into mental health to make a lot of money. If you want to make money, then be an engineer or study computer science. There is nothing altruistic about it, but you will probably make more money with a bachelors in those fields than you would as a doctor or clinical social worker with doctoral level education once malpractice insurance is taken into account. That is what the economics and statistics say.
 
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I agree. My father is a doctor and I need some one to pay for my school. And by that I mean books and booze.
 
I think a lot of the anger isn't at doctors. They work hard for what they get. A lot of the anger is at health care insurers, who make way too much money and have way too much control over the system.
 
Unless you go into a specialty, doctors really don't get paid a whole lot of money.

When you factor in schooling costs, opportunity costs of going to that school, and malpractice insurance, they're not exactly rolling in it. Granted, there's a far cry from the average doctor and pauperish TV doctors like Becker and House.

I consider doctors rather underpaid. It's nurses I consider overpaid personally. Then again, when there's a shortage you have to go by what the market, and supply/demand tells you. Same reason why teachers, as a whole, are overpaid.
Nurses do most of the work
 
Unless you go into a specialty, doctors really don't get paid a whole lot of money.

When you factor in schooling costs, opportunity costs of going to that school, and malpractice insurance, they're not exactly rolling in it. Granted, there's a far cry from the average doctor and pauperish TV doctors like Becker and House.

I consider doctors rather underpaid. It's nurses I consider overpaid personally. Then again, when there's a shortage you have to go by what the market, and supply/demand tells you. Same reason why teachers, as a whole, are overpaid.

Excuse me?
Have you any idea exactly what a nurse does? Did you know that nurses are similarly liable for malpractice? Even if they are following a doctors instruction? All of the work, all of the responsibility, none of the benifits.
It is truely one of the last vocations left.
 
The reason for the existence of hospitals is the provision of 24 hour nursing care.
 
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