Re: #1 and #3
"If you're young and a republican you have no heart. If you're old and a democrat you have no brain" - Winston Churchill
Oh, young grasshopper. Clearly you have not been through the pains of medical school and residency. Clearly you have not worked at an inner city hospital and seen 80% of your patients on Medicaid w/"disability" (though they have no real disability other than being obese, lazy and empowered by our current welfare system), still smoke 1 ppd, drink a fifth of alcohol/day (those two things, probably $20/day), have a cell phone nicer than mine, yet are frequent flyers with CHF exacerbations (or whatever) b/c they say they don't have enough money to pay for their BP meds and diuretics...you are ignorant not because you lack intelligence, you just haven't "been there".
Don't get me wrong, I love being a physician and consider it a privilege to have such tremendous impact in the lives and well being of others. Fortunately for me, I have found my calling in caring for the patient population which I have the utmost sympathy and compassion for, those stricken with cancer. Admittedly, there are many forms of cancer that are self-induced, but I will not get into that at this point.
That being said, given what one has to go through to get to this point:
1. Years of delayed gratification
2. $250,000 in medical school tuition/costs @ 7.5% interest rate (thanks, government)
3. Opportunity cost of giving up 9 years of salary/life for med school + residency
4. I could go on and on...
I feel like I should be well compensated for the aforementioned reasons. Best of luck to all of you.
