Rad Onc SK
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The study authors took a unique approach, linking Medicare's registry of physicians (the National Plan and Provider Enumeration System, or NPPES) to physicians' tax information with their NPIs and specialties. They analyzed more than 10 million tax records from 965,000 physicians over 13 years. They focused on “peak earning years”, ages 40-55.
Radiation oncology fell 3rd on the list, at $709,000. Neurosurgeons (about $920,000) and orthopedic surgeons ($789,000) were 1st and 2nd. These 2 specialties worked, on average, substantially more hours per week than RO according to their analysis.
The WaPo article did acknowledge high student debt and the relative lack of doctors in the US as compared to other countries. Most importantly, IMO, they did acknowledge that doctor pay consumes only 8.6% of overall health spending.
From the article: “People have a narrative that physician earnings is one of the main drivers of high health-care costs in the U.S.,” Polyakova told us. “It is kind of hard to support this narrative if ultimately physicians earn less than 10 percent of national health-care expenditures.”
Links to both the WaPo article and the actual NBER article are below.
www.nber.org
Radiation oncology fell 3rd on the list, at $709,000. Neurosurgeons (about $920,000) and orthopedic surgeons ($789,000) were 1st and 2nd. These 2 specialties worked, on average, substantially more hours per week than RO according to their analysis.
The WaPo article did acknowledge high student debt and the relative lack of doctors in the US as compared to other countries. Most importantly, IMO, they did acknowledge that doctor pay consumes only 8.6% of overall health spending.
From the article: “People have a narrative that physician earnings is one of the main drivers of high health-care costs in the U.S.,” Polyakova told us. “It is kind of hard to support this narrative if ultimately physicians earn less than 10 percent of national health-care expenditures.”
Links to both the WaPo article and the actual NBER article are below.

Who Values Human Capitalists' Human Capital? The Earnings and Labor Supply of U.S. Physicians
Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, and business professionals.