Residents generally get 3-4 weeks per year of paid vacation. From what I've seen, as an attending, its extremely dependent on field, personality and practice set-up. A crazy trauma surgeon may take q2 call and hardly take a vacation in his entire career (this is a real thing). On the flip side, certain hospital based fields where you don't follow patients longitudinally or have to pay an office staff (rads, anesthesia, em) you may be able to take 2-3 months off. Hospitalists often work a 7-on, 7-off schedule. Long days while you are working but considerable number of days off per year.
Stuff like this is probably why I've heard rumors of UK docs moving to greener pastures in Australia. Now, in general, American professionals of all disciplines are better paid than their British counterparts from what I've heard. I know plenty of engineers and computer scientists making equal or greater than the equivalent of 80,000 pounds just 3-5 years out of university. We actually have a 2-year masters degree program called a Physician Assistant that holds a market value of $100,000 or more fresh out. It is a travesty to me that the NHS is paying mid-career and senior consultants at the same level.
While it is true that the absolute number puts you at the equivalent of a PA or CS major/PhD at a decent company here, looking at actual percentile of earners in the UK, £80,000 puts them well into the top 5% of UK earners. In the US, the top 5% of earners makes the average physician salary of $300,000.
I think the fairer comparison to make here would be what ~275k is by percentile in America against what ~100k is by percentile in Britain. I bet we just have higher and lower extremes, and a UK physician making 80-100k is probably still top few percent.
This is the thing. As far as percentile for earners, they're essentially equivalent. While physicians absolute amount is certainly more, they also have to pay a lot more for many things and get less average time off.
Physicians live comfortably here, but they also live comfortably in the UK. In terms of additional fees US physicians pay, debt and associated interest is certainly a big one. Cost of a lot of the best private universities for their kids is actually approaching $60k/yr, and physicians would not be eligible for need-based financial aid and often at that level merit-based doesn't exist. Malpractice insurance is another cost, but for many its covered by their employer, although employers will pay closer to the median or slightly below it compared to PP. Vacation/PTO time is less, even if you're getting 8 wks (I would guess that most physicians are in the 6 wks/yr range here). This completely ignores things like parental leave that are guaranteed in the UK. To give some perspective here, the US guarantees 12 wks of unpaid leave for the mother only and most good companies may offer 6-8 wks of paid leave. In the UK, the parents (either) get to share 50 wks of leave total and 37 of those wks are paid leave.
Healthcare costs are pretty high here. Unlike a lot of people in the US that might go bankrupt in the setting of a major illness, physicians likely won't. An emergency with my daughter for example cost us ~$4k last year for a day's worth of medical care despite having very good insurance and my wife probably spent multiple hours on the phone with the insurance company and healthcare system to have the bills billed correctly and covered as they should be. The $4k was manageable, even as a resident, albeit it meant much less spending for a period of about 6 mos. By the way, we've also gotten new bills for that encounter as recently as 8 mos later.
Basically, I think all this adds up to physicians in the US making about as much as or slightly more than physicians in the UK. No, it is nowhere close to "swimming in gold" for most (although it might be for the top earners), but it is comfortable enough not to have to worry about things most Americans worry about, but to be fair many of those things are things many in the UK don't worry about.
