Cinceyreds gave $400K x 40 years. I simply used his assumptions. Re: taxes, I'm not going to be sending any extra money Uncle Sam's way, but for the most part, we (those in the overall medical profession) get decent pay for our work. A stable, adequately-funded government helps create an environment from which we all benefit. Medicare pays for ~60% of all healthcare in America, so we're also getting directly paid by the government for our work. Yeah, anesthesiologists get a bit of a finger from Medicare/Medicaid, but I'm not overly upset as your general annual reimbursement is hardly putting you in the poor house.
The (presumably) older docs always talk about how big a burden loans are, but I have to scratch my head when we also have
posts by attendings 2 years out who have paid off their entire loan debt already. (Sevo had a post awhile ago about him and his wife paying off their student loan debt in
1 year and making $500K each in Nebraska or somewhere in the Midwest.) Please give me another field (law?, business?) where you can essentially be guaranteed a wage of >200K for simply passing your classes at any old school. Yeah, law & business can be more lucrative, but you have to get to a top 20 school and be the best in your class for those jobs. Median lawyer salary is
$113K (that's
all lawyers, not just new ones). A study looked at the top MBA programs and how much their graduates earned over 20 years. Harvard MBAs earned
$3,639,643 over 20 years. That's an average of $182K/yr.
PCPs are matching MBA money from a top school! So, you see why I'm a bit skeptical about all this concern over physician pay and people leaving medicine for greener pastures.
The
deficit's coming down, and the natural gas boom in
America (
& the world) will fund cheap energy for decades to come. Overall, the economic recovery is slow, but steady. This should really be an optimistic time for those of us who's incomes put us in the 90+%. Income inequality is honestly my main concern and one of the biggest impediments to a robust economic recovery.
Re: my paying off loans, please don't worry on my account.
I'm a non-traditional student, and I'm easily as old as some younger attendings. I've paid taxes before. My loans & taxes will not cause me to not buy a house or have kids when I want them.