Q: You're a doctor; why do you care so much about this? You're making bank!
"You're a doctor; why do you care so much about this? You're making bank!" I get this comment a lot.
Here's the long and the short of it: yes, physicians make lots of money. Yes, some salaries in medicine are highly inflated compared to others.
But rather than go down the "we've sacrificed years of our lives for this" pathway, I want you to remember that physicians are people. We get sick. We have families. We hate knuckleheaded people in positions of power telling us what to do too. Someday, I will be old, and I would rather have the Geriatric P.S.Y.C.H. program in place and running than be fighting with Medicare Advantage and Part B and drama and dying alone.
I'm blessed to be in a profession that ranges $120-$400 an hour depending on location, expertise, and skill. I have friends who are pediatric subspecialists, surgeons, OB-GYNs, ER docs, and internists. Most of us would love to work in a system where we come to work, see patients, help them feel better, then go home to our own lives and families.
Our current system makes a mockery of what we thought we were getting into. And most of my fellow physicians would be fine with sacrificing some pay to make a better system. Let the market work it's magic, and I think we'll see some very surprising things happen.
Or you can keep doing what you're doing, and I'll keep rolling in the dough.