How to make a million dollars a year as a Doctor...

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MoneyDoc

Seriously, everyone is thinking this exact thought if you are in medical school. I don't want to hear those liberal whinings about the poor and all that crap. Everyone is concerned about their future bank account! So, we've worked hard for 4 years of school, and then (for surgery) like 6 to 7 years of residency and we want to make some money. If the system is socialized, the government will be in control of our wages as a whole. We cannot let that happen. What are some ideas to prevent that from happening as well as maximize our bank rolls?
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MoneyDoc said:
Seriously, everyone is thinking this exact thought if you are in medical school. I don't want to hear those liberal whinings about the poor and all that crap. Everyone is concerned about their future bank account! So, we've worked hard for 4 years of school, and then (for surgery) like 6 to 7 years of residency and we want to make some money. If the system is socialized, the government will be in control of our wages as a whole. We cannot let that happen. What are some ideas to prevent that from happening as well as maximize our bank rolls?
Click to expand...

:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
 
only a businessman could better answer your question.

it involves marketing, location, defrauding insurance companies, defrauding cash patients, telling patients to come back unnecessarily for followups, other sneaky tactics.......... what else..... hmm.....

as soon as you have that money, then you can pray for the next hot stock like Apple was 2 years ago, and dump a sh**load of money into it.
 
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I don't know if you've watched nip/tuck this year but taking kidneys seems to be lucritive.
 
Invest wisely. Don't blow your money on frivolous things.
 
OP, so you want to make millions of dollars and the first thing that popped in your head was 'medicine'. I know you are just kidding. Right?
 
sirus_virus said:
OP, so you want to make millions of dollars and the first thing that popped in your head was 'medicine'. I know you are just kidding. Right?
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Well, given the user-name and avatar, I suspect this is a money-focused individual (among many). I hope it makes him/her happy; I know that money never does the trick for me (but paying the bills is a good thing!).
 
I think that medicine can still be very lucrative. I don't think that MDs should suffer just because many people choose not to purchase medical insurance. There are many affordable options for insurance, even for people who make 300% over the poverty line. Given that doctors in Canada and in other countries make slim to none, we need to keep the gov't out to keep MDs rich. The AMA doesn't seem to be doing enough to help doctors perpetuate their lavish lifestyle. One great example: In the 80's, ophthalmologists used to make some $2000 per cataract surgery. Now, with better technology, less errors, and less complications, the ophtho docs make about $600 per surgery. A surgery which may only take a few minutes less than it did in the 80's. Fair? I think not. But with the gov't being the biggest purchaser of health care in the nation, and essentially in the world given that we spend some 30-35% of the world's healthcare budget, they are able to leverage against doctors to make the prices much lower than what they should be. There needs to be more opacity when it comes to pricing for patients so that the don't know what they are getting charged until they receive their bill and then they have to pay it or else it will go to the credit bureaus. I know that since I'm going into spine surgery, I'll make at least a million a year, but I want more rich docs so we can all hang out, play golf on exclusive courses, and talk about doctor stuff. So, please, take my ideas seriously.
 
Making a mil/year is easy . . . it's just gonna take you about 30 years to do it. You'd have to max your 401k/roth during residency and then live like a resident for about 5 years after that when you're making 'real doctor money.' If you wisely invest all that and then put about 60k/year into the market for the rest of your career and build equity in your house, you should have about 10-15 mill by the end. At that point, the return you make would be about 1 mill/year.
 
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MoneyDoc said:
I think that medicine can still be very lucrative. I don't think that MDs should suffer just because many people choose not to purchase medical insurance. There are many affordable options for insurance, even for people who make 300% over the poverty line. Given that doctors in Canada and in other countries make slim to none, we need to keep the gov't out to keep MDs rich. The AMA doesn't seem to be doing enough to help doctors perpetuate their lavish lifestyle. One great example: In the 80's, ophthalmologists used to make some $2000 per cataract surgery. Now, with better technology, less errors, and less complications, the ophtho docs make about $600 per surgery. A surgery which may only take a few minutes less than it did in the 80's. Fair? I think not. But with the gov't being the biggest purchaser of health care in the nation, and essentially in the world given that we spend some 30-35% of the world's healthcare budget, they are able to leverage against doctors to make the prices much lower than what they should be. There needs to be more opacity when it comes to pricing for patients so that the don't know what they are getting charged until they receive their bill and then they have to pay it or else it will go to the credit bureaus. I know that since I'm going into spine surgery, I'll make at least a million a year, but I want more rich docs so we can all hang out, play golf on exclusive courses, and talk about doctor stuff. So, please, take my ideas seriously.
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LMFAO :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:
 
Here's a new avatar if you're shopping around:

637164.jpg


What I have been told is that if you are going into medicine for the money, you may be disappointed. There may be some things you can do to make more money (do more procedures, pick a field with more compensation), but it's going to be tough to control the market so that physician compensation will necessarily go up.
 
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MoneyDoc said:
I think that medicine can still be very lucrative. I don't think that MDs should suffer just because many people choose not to purchase medical insurance. There are many affordable options for insurance, even for people who make 300% over the poverty line. Given that doctors in Canada and in other countries make slim to none, we need to keep the gov't out to keep MDs rich. The AMA doesn't seem to be doing enough to help doctors perpetuate their lavish lifestyle. One great example: In the 80's, ophthalmologists used to make some $2000 per cataract surgery. Now, with better technology, less errors, and less complications, the ophtho docs make about $600 per surgery. A surgery which may only take a few minutes less than it did in the 80's. Fair? I think not. But with the gov't being the biggest purchaser of health care in the nation, and essentially in the world given that we spend some 30-35% of the world's healthcare budget, they are able to leverage against doctors to make the prices much lower than what they should be. There needs to be more opacity when it comes to pricing for patients so that the don't know what they are getting charged until they receive their bill and then they have to pay it or else it will go to the credit bureaus. I know that since I'm going into spine surgery, I'll make at least a million a year, but I want more rich docs so we can all hang out, play golf on exclusive courses, and talk about doctor stuff. So, please, take my ideas seriously.
Click to expand...


It's sad to see dementia set in at such a young age... your lack of understanding of folks inability to afford insurance, bizarre and illegal billing ideas, and your outdated notions of what physicians are currently and, based on current trends, will be making is mind boggling. Good luck with all that.
 
MoneyDoc said:
I think that medicine can still be very lucrative. I don't think that MDs should suffer just because many people choose not to purchase medical insurance. There are many affordable options for insurance, even for people who make 300% over the poverty line. Given that doctors in Canada and in other countries make slim to none, we need to keep the gov't out to keep MDs rich. The AMA doesn't seem to be doing enough to help doctors perpetuate their lavish lifestyle. One great example: In the 80's, ophthalmologists used to make some $2000 per cataract surgery. Now, with better technology, less errors, and less complications, the ophtho docs make about $600 per surgery. A surgery which may only take a few minutes less than it did in the 80's. Fair? I think not. But with the gov't being the biggest purchaser of health care in the nation, and essentially in the world given that we spend some 30-35% of the world's healthcare budget, they are able to leverage against doctors to make the prices much lower than what they should be. There needs to be more opacity when it comes to pricing for patients so that the don't know what they are getting charged until they receive their bill and then they have to pay it or else it will go to the credit bureaus. I know that since I'm going into spine surgery, I'll make at least a million a year, but I want more rich docs so we can all hang out, play golf on exclusive courses, and talk about doctor stuff. So, please, take my ideas seriously.
Click to expand...

What lavish lifestyle? Now I know you are trolling.
 
Check the number of posts that the OP has.

I'm more worried about debt and decreasing insurance reimbursements than I am about what I'm going to do with earnings.
 
MoneyDoc said:
...since I'm going into spine surgery, I'll make at least a million a year, but I want more rich docs so we can all hang out, play golf on exclusive courses, and talk about doctor stuff...
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Isn't spinal surgery the realm of the neurosurgeon?

Regardless, you'll probably be too old and tired to enjoy your millions...you might as well just divide your assets in half now because you'll end up divorced by some gold digger and paying alimony anyway.
 
where do you want to play golf and talk doctor stuff.

i'm pretty sure that i'll be earning 2 million dollars a year doing boob jobs in san diego.

count me in.
 
MoneyDoc said:
I think that medicine can still be very lucrative. I don't think that MDs should suffer just because many people choose not to purchase medical insurance. There are many affordable options for insurance, even for people who make 300% over the poverty line. Given that doctors in Canada and in other countries make slim to none, we need to keep the gov't out to keep MDs rich. The AMA doesn't seem to be doing enough to help doctors perpetuate their lavish lifestyle. One great example: In the 80's, ophthalmologists used to make some $2000 per cataract surgery. Now, with better technology, less errors, and less complications, the ophtho docs make about $600 per surgery. A surgery which may only take a few minutes less than it did in the 80's. Fair? I think not. But with the gov't being the biggest purchaser of health care in the nation, and essentially in the world given that we spend some 30-35% of the world's healthcare budget, they are able to leverage against doctors to make the prices much lower than what they should be. There needs to be more opacity when it comes to pricing for patients so that the don't know what they are getting charged until they receive their bill and then they have to pay it or else it will go to the credit bureaus. I know that since I'm going into spine surgery, I'll make at least a million a year, but I want more rich docs so we can all hang out, play golf on exclusive courses, and talk about doctor stuff. So, please, take my ideas seriously.
Click to expand...


I have a business idea. When we have our group of rich docs hanging out at the golf course and hosting sexy parties, I am sure we will have some amazingly interesting conversations. Here is the plan...we charge people to follow us around and listen to how smart and interesting we are. We can charge additional fees for a question and answer session at the end of the day. We simply capitalize on being brilliant and awesome.
 
By socializing healthcare...would that mean that blue cross, united health, ect. are going to pay less $$ to the doctors?

Does making healthcare across the US a standard provided by the US Government great for the country and not so great for future physicians?
 
Brown429 said:
By socializing healthcare...would that mean that blue cross, united health, ect. are going to pay less $$ to the doctors?

Does making healthcare across the US a standard provided by the US Government great for the country and not so great for future physicians?
Click to expand...

I think that's the general expectation.
 
Law2Doc said:
It's sad to see dementia set in at such a young age... your lack of understanding of folks inability to afford insurance, bizarre and illegal billing ideas, and your outdated notions of what physicians are currently and, based on current trends, will be making is mind boggling. Good luck with all that.
Click to expand...

:thumbup:

I have no objections with people interested in their financial security... you're an idiot if you think idealism alone puts food on the table. But what you're talking about is just as foolish. A million dollars a year is extremely difficult to earn in every field not just medicine.
 
If healthcare WAS socialized, how much would doctors make? Lets say now they make around $300,000 for an orthopedic spine surgeon. After socializing medicine, would they only make like...$150,000? If so, thats still a good amount of money.

Also, if medicine was socialized, would doctors still pay malpractice insurance?
 
I haven't seen any proposals linking universal health coverage and tort reform. Voters don't care so much about medical tort reform, at least not as much as they do about "free" health care.

Personally if my income is going to be cut in half I'll do my darndest to move to New Zealand where they have a no-fault system.
 
TheProwler said:
_1906823_cocaine_pile300.jpg
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Is that reimbursible? If so, there's your golden goose.

To the OP: Go into diagnostic medicine, it's full of lucrative procedures you can bill for.
 
I'm with Pinkertinkle and Tulane. This one was so over-the-top and obvious, it's shameful. Not for the topic, but rather for the low quality of trolling the OP represents. I'm kind of sad that that's the best we can do for trolls... No subtlety to this at all.

As far as making a million a year? If someone can, they have my sincere admiration. Nothing wrong with making a crapton of money.
 
Church said:
I'm with Pinkertinkle and Tulane. This one was so over-the-top and obvious, it's shameful. Not for the topic, but rather for the low quality of trolling the OP represents. I'm kind of sad that that's the best we can do for trolls... No subtlety to this at all.

As far as making a million a year? If someone can, they have my sincere admiration. Nothing wrong with making a crapton of money.
Click to expand...

Well, the user name and quote were a bit over the top, as well as the extremely low post count.
 
Church said:
I'm kind of sad that that's the best we can do for trolls... No subtlety to this at all.
Click to expand...

What's sad is that by the time we are done with our training, we will have already missed the gravy train. I was just talking to a vascular surgeon that was saying how their salaries have been cut in half. Contrary to what the troll was implying, Neurosurgery is going through big salary cuts right now. Add to that the fact that drug companies are no longer allowed to take us on lavish vacations.

When is our generation going to stop getting cheesed? Instead of sex, drugs, and rock n roll, we get the threat of AIDS hanging over our heads. Instead of a million dollars a year, we get 200K in school loans, skyrocketing malpractice premiums, and plummeting salaries.
 
Dakota said:
I haven't seen any proposals linking universal health coverage and tort reform. Voters don't care so much about medical tort reform, at least not as much as they do about "free" health care.

Personally if my income is going to be cut in half I'll do my darndest to move to New Zealand where they have a no-fault system.
Click to expand...

:thumbup:
 
Law2Doc said:
Well, the user name and quote were a bit over the top, as well as the extremely low post count.
Click to expand...

Actually I think this has been your strategy all along. Get an innocuous user name. Establish trust in the SDN community for years. Get a lot of posts. Then start a sneaky subtle troll thread. I can tell you're just waiting to pounce.
 
Good Ole Dr. Rey. I kinda like the guy.
 
Did the thread title make anyone else think of Steve Martin's routine?

I can see it now: "Here's how to make a million dollars a year as a doctor. First, become a doctor. Then, every year, get a million dollars!"
 
i61164 said:
What's sad is that by the time we are done with our training, we will have already missed the gravy train. I was just talking to a vascular surgeon that was saying how their salaries have been cut in half. Contrary to what the troll was implying, Neurosurgery is going through big salary cuts right now. Add to that the fact that drug companies are no longer allowed to take us on lavish vacations.
Click to expand...

The thing is, even though I do have sympathy for the older generation of doctors who saw their incomes (which are not, in most cases, salaries) collapse, it would be hard for me to be disappointed about my own future if "cut in half" meant having gone from $600k to $300k and staying there. What I fear is that more like $100k is going to become the norm--at which point it becomes not really worth it to go through med school and residency.
 
Trismegistus4 said:
The thing is, even though I do have sympathy for the older generation of doctors who saw their incomes (which are not, in most cases, salaries) collapse, it would be hard for me to be disappointed about my own future if "cut in half" meant having gone from $600k to $300k and staying there. What I fear is that more like $100k is going to become the norm--at which point it becomes not really worth it to go through med school and residency.
Click to expand...

This is why medicine is a strange muther****er. Every other job(including janitors) projects rise in pay, doctors on the other hand are heading in the opposite direction.
 
Trismegistus4 said:
Did the thread title make anyone else think of Steve Martin's routine?

I can see it now: "Here's how to make a million dollars a year as a doctor. First, become a doctor. Then, every year, get a million dollars!"
Click to expand...

:thumbup: :thumbup:
 
MoneyDoc said:
Seriously, everyone is thinking this exact thought if you are in medical school. I don't want to hear those liberal whinings about the poor and all that crap. Everyone is concerned about their future bank account! So, we've worked hard for 4 years of school, and then (for surgery) like 6 to 7 years of residency and we want to make some money. If the system is socialized, the government will be in control of our wages as a whole. We cannot let that happen. What are some ideas to prevent that from happening as well as maximize our bank rolls?
Click to expand...

You'll need to have some desirable personal qualifications: you need to be tall, good looking, have light color skin, preferably male, went to a school such as HMS/JHMS, scored over 270 on USMLE, etc. And it won't hurt to either come from a rich family or married into one. If you have all the above, you will probably have trouble making less than a mil/yr. Good luck!
 
You don't have to make a ton to end up with a lot of cash.

For instance:
30yrs
$4K/mo. (48K/yr)
8.0% (very safe)

$5,961,437.79

Compound this with moderately well placed investments in real estate (your home, a mountain house, a beach house, etc...) and you would be worth well over $10M after 30 years as a primary care physician.

BTW - if you supersize your specialty and make over 200K per year and invest 100K/year @ the same paltry 8.0%the numbers look like this:

$12.4M

Just be smart... although the fact that you are looking to make a lot probably means you won't be very frugal.
 
Still haven't answered my question...lets say surgeons make like $300,000 now, using the current trends, about how much willl they make in 30 years or so? Can salaries, in 30 or so years, go from like $300,000 to like $150,000?
 
PreMedDocMD said:
Still haven't answered my question...lets say surgeons make like $300,000 now, using the current trends, about how much willl they make in 30 years or so? Can salaries, in 30 or so years, go from like $300,000 to like $150,000?
Click to expand...

It's hard enough to predict what will happen next year, let alone 30 years from now.

U.S. physician salaries account for about $50 billion/yr in cost above that of other nations (adjusted for wealth) (http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/rp/healthcare/accounting_cost_healthcare.asp , open the synthesis PDF, register for free). That extra money spent (and dollars in other areas) may become homing signal for politicians and insurance company looking to temper the increases in U.S. healthcare costs. It's going to be a battle between physicians who want to keep their compensation up and those that stand to gain by reducing it. It's going to be a tough fight. It is my impression that physicians are more prepared to perform diagnostics and procedures than to do battle on the economic front and they will lose ground, perhaps even as much as you indicate (although your reduction seems large and less likely to me). Average pay may go down, but how much and how fast depends on the economic contest. Demand for medical services will go up, so there are some trends that could lead to an increase in physician salaries; what isn't clear is where the money to pay for higher salaries would come from if avg salaries did go up for physicians overall (beyond general inflation).
 
PreMedDocMD said:
Still haven't answered my question...lets say surgeons make like $300,000 now, using the current trends, about how much willl they make in 30 years or so? Can salaries, in 30 or so years, go from like $300,000 to like $150,000?
Click to expand...

It's more important to look at inflation adjusted dollars than actual dollars. I think it is entirely possible that physician salaries will remain steady under a new system with specialist compensation decreasing somewhat. However, if pay remains steady, this would represent an a 3% pay cut each year if inflation holds at 3% a year, so in 30 years, your $300,000/yr would represent only $123,596 in 2007 dollars (I think I did this right).

This would of course be even less if actual cuts take place.

Keep in mind some CT surgeons have complained about compensations decreasing from $500-$600k a decade ago to half those levels today. That's mostly from competition from interventional cards, but still represents a significant cut for those surgeons.
 
OncoCaP said:
It's hard enough to predict what will happen next year, let alone 30 years from now.

U.S. physician salaries account for about $50 billion/yr in cost above that of other nations (adjusted for wealth) (http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/rp/healthcare/accounting_cost_healthcare.asp , open the synthesis PDF, register for free). That extra money spent (and dollars in other areas) may become homing signal for politicians and insurance company looking to temper the increases in U.S. healthcare costs. It's going to be a battle between physicians who want to keep their compensation up and those that stand to gain by reducing it. It's going to be a tough fight. It is my impression that physicians are more prepared to perform diagnostics and procedures than to do battle on the economic front and they will lose ground, perhaps even as much as you indicate (although your reduction seems large and less likely to me). Average pay may go down, but how much and how fast depends on the economic contest. Demand for medical services will go up, so there are some trends that could lead to an increase in physician salaries; what isn't clear is where the money to pay for higher salaries would come from if avg salaries did go up for physicians overall (beyond general inflation).
Click to expand...


Dude, If I see another comparison of the U.S to other nations I will break my PC screen. 50 billion dollars...well lord take us now. When they came out with the study that showed that our tort system accounts for 150 billion dollars extra in healthcare spending, everyone said it was not significant enough to warrant change, but 50 billion dollars extra to physicians laden with debt means the sky is falling? Give me a break.

BTW, why should we not pay our doctors more in the U.S? Every other professional earns more on average than their counterparts in Europe for crying out loud. Not to mention the training in the U.S is significantly longer(and more expensive). Give doctors free education and see if you don't end up spending more than 50 billion dollars extra.
 
Ok, one more thing...everyone has SAID that the trend is going down, but is there some sort of internet source, graph, etc. that also shows actually stats? Real numbers and fats would be good...oh, and for all specialties.
 
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