•There are plenty of people with Ph.D's that have put up with as much grief as doctors and they will never see the salary of a doctor.•
Paying for grad school on your own is nearly unheard of nowadays. Every graduate program in the country offers tuition wavers for TAships and RAships. Perhaps one out of a hundred grad students will not want to do a TAship and end up paying for it on their own (which is by their own choice). And they also usually get a nice little stipend (usually about $16,000 per year).
And are PhD's faced with several superfluous lawsuits a year which are often settled at their expense? Do they pay an average of $10K-$25K each year in malpractice premiums, depending on the specialty? I'm not saying that PhDs are not deserving of the money. I certainly am not questioning their extent of knowledge or the difficulty of the PhD program. In fact, I never used EITHER of those as reasons docs should make high salaries. I am saying that there are expenses and sacrificies that physicans have that PhDs (and many other professions) do not have.
And don't make it out like PhDs don't make good money. Although there are many who make no more than $30K-$50K per year, there are also many who make upwards of $150K per year (both in academia and industry). And with no student loans or malpractice insurance. Boo-hoo. <img border="0" alt="[Pity]" title="" src="graemlins/pity.gif" />
•Your med school debts will be PEANUTS compared to the pile of money you have accumulated after 30 to 35 years of work.•
Anyone who has done any amount of research into financial issues (or who has taken a basic calculus or economics course) knows that beginning a savings program (IRA, 401K) when you are in your early twenties can nearly double the amount of your savings when you are entering retirement. Some kid coming out of an MBA program when he's 23-24 making $50K per year has a hell of a start on docs, who really won't be able to start any serious savings until a decade later. This can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars. Do the math.
•So please stop whining about the debt and that you will be 30 before you make a "real" salary. Boo-hoo. <img border="0" alt="[Pity]" title="" src="graemlins/pity.gif" /> •
Seems that you're the only one who is whining. I simply presented the argument that docs don't make NEARLY as much as most people assume. There are good reasons that they need to make as much as they do if they are to stay competitive with the salaries of other professions. Docs are not the only ones making big money, but they are the only ones subject to the expenses I listed above.
People do not have to sign the contracts they are given post-residency. They can surely decide to accept less money if they wanted to (I'm sure the hospitals would have no problem with this). Obviously, no one does this, and for good reasons - you are in a CAREER to make money. Everyone should love their career. But if people ONLY did what they do because they had passion for it, we'd all be musicians, artists, and actors.
