Work for 30K?

[MrTee]

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You've got to be kidding, nobody who's jumped through all the hoops to become a doctor would accept that kind of chump change. This is quite clearly a PRE-med question.

If it ensured universal health access to quality care, and debt burden was reduced proportionally, would you still want to be a physician if your take home was 30K a year?

 

[medhacker]

but of course I'd prefer being able to buy red peppers instead of green! Hopefully these habits will help us when trying to pay of loans, though.

hahaha when you know the difference in price between red green and yellow peppers then you know you know what you are talking about...

 

[Ross434]

hahaha when you know the difference in price between red green and yellow peppers then you know you know what you are talking about...

🙁 green peppers suck. I feel for your situation.

 

[medhacker]

🙁 green peppers suck. I feel for your situation.

Not if you or your wife know how to cook, I feel for yours

 

[radioh3ad]

get thin-sliced chicken breast on sale.
ginger, scallions, green peppers, onions (not the expensive vidalia)
olive oil, light spices
brown rice or whole grain noodles.

you got urself some meal.

i concur with the green>red. i always wanna get those red/orange/yellow combos but then my wallet slaps me awake.

just a tip for boston/ny people. freshdirect or peapod is a great way to shop if you buy everything on sale. save time and money!

 

[PineappleGirl]

i concur with the green>red. i always wanna get those red/orange/yellow combos but then my wallet slaps me awake.

Those things are evil! They look all nice and pretty, but soooo expensive! 😡

Love your avatar, by the way.

For relaxing times, make it Suntory time.

 

[tigress]

Yum, we make delicious taco filling with green peppers, onions, beans, and spices. Actually we're pretty lucky, because my husband's grandfather lives on a farm, so in the summer and early fall we get tons of produce from him. Unfortunately he went to London for this week right when most of his peppers were maturing, so he decided to go ahead and pick them and give them to us. They're mostly green, though some have yellow or orange sides. We also get eggplant, cucumbers, and tomatoes from him. Not as much this year as last year, because he's getting older and isn't really able to keep the garden up as much. 🙁 But the extra fresh produce really helps with our grocery budget! And now I'm spoiled; I don't like tomatoes much in general, but I'll eat Grandpa's! Then when I eat a store tomato I get all disappointed 😛

 

[tigress]

... onions (not the expensive vidalia)... whole grain noodles.

Vidalias go on sale sometimes!! We got a huge box of them a few months ago for a great price. But it doesn't happen often. I haven't found any really affordable whole-grain pasta. Do you know of a brand that isn't prohibitively expensive? We don't eat much pasta because of that. Brown rice is great though. And if I have time I love to make homemade whole wheat bread. Yum. It's actually possible to eat healthily on a budget, but you have to be really on top of things. We eat tons of fruit and veggies and beans (beans are cheap!!). I wish I could afford fully organic produce. Someday...when we're both making at least $80k as a doctor 😛 😛

 

[radioh3ad]

Those things are evil! They look all nice and pretty, but soooo expensive! 😡

Love your avatar, by the way.

For relaxing times, make it Suntory time.

you gotta see glass flowers. same guy, different name.

 

[radioh3ad]

Vidalias go on sale sometimes!! We got a huge box of them a few months ago for a great price. But it doesn't happen often. I haven't found any really affordable whole-grain pasta. Do you know of a brand that isn't prohibitively expensive? We don't eat much pasta because of that. Brown rice is great though. And if I have time I love to make homemade whole wheat bread. Yum. It's actually possible to eat healthily on a budget, but you have to be really on top of things. We eat tons of fruit and veggies and beans (beans are cheap!!). I wish I could afford fully organic produce. Someday...when we're both making at least $80k as a doctor 😛 😛

cheers to healthy eating

 

[tank you]

cheers to healthy eating

definately, i love trader joes 👍

edit: not sure if they have it outside of california...

 

[PineappleGirl]

definately, i love trader joes 👍

edit: not sure if they have it outside of california...

We have Trader Joe's in Boston. Mmmmm! I love it! You have to be kind of wise when shopping there. I wouldn't recommend doing all your shopping there since some stuff is very expensive, but some stuff is really cheap. For example, all their cheese and cheese products are so much better quality than the grocery store and way cheaper. 🙂

 

[PineappleGirl]

you gotta see glass flowers. same guy, different name.

Yeah, I've been looking forward to it. Maybe this weekend.

 

[Ross434]

We have Trader Joe's in Boston. Mmmmm! I love it! You have to be kind of wise when shopping there. I wouldn't recommend doing all your shopping there since some stuff is very expensive, but some stuff is really cheap. For example, all their cheese and cheese products are so much better quality than the grocery store and way cheaper. 🙂

Wow i thought trader joes was expensive as hell. I'll be sure to visit it when it's finished being built here. Specialty produce markets like that around here sell $15/lb cheese.

 

[medhacker]

I haven't found any really affordable whole-grain pasta. Do you know of a brand that isn't prohibitively expensive? We don't eat much pasta because of that. Brown rice is great though. And if I have time I love to make homemade whole wheat bread. Yum. It's actually possible to eat healthily on a budget, but you have to be really on top of things. We eat tons of fruit and veggies and beans (beans are cheap!!). I wish I could afford fully organic produce. Someday...when we're both making at least $80k as a doctor 😛 😛

We used to get a nice and economical whole-wheat pasta in Florida, the name went something like harvest...something.

🙂 we feel the same way about organic, we will wait until God willing I become a doc.

 

[Darth Asclepius]

and I'd probably still be working long hours (50-60+ hrs/wk)

If you were lucky. Many doctors, surgeons especially, work more than 60 hours/week. (I know you said 60+, just emphasizing the + part). Also, you won't start earning any money until you're 30+ with no savings. I'll be at least 34 when I finish my surgical residency eventually. How would you ever even semi-comfortably support a family and save for your own retirement on 30k starting at that age? And it would absolutely have to be NO debt, not just reduction. The accumulation of interest over time makes even lower loan amounts expensive to pay off.

 

[thegenius]

This is such a ridiculous thread. We need to delete it.

"Who here wants to work for 30k?" What a dumb question.

Yea, I want to work and make as little as possible.

 

[Law2Doc]

This is such a ridiculous thread. We need to delete it.

"Who here wants to work for 30k?" What a dumb question.

Yea, I want to work and make as little as possible.

While I am impressed by the couple of success stories of people who have made do decently on 30k, I would suggest that this is not the national norm, and simply cannot be done in most of the major coastal cities. I mean, you can spend that level of income on rent alone if you were living in NYC, and that leaves basically nothing for taxes, food, loans, transportation and other expenses. For those others who are still in school, I would suggest that while 30k might seem like a lot more than you've ever earned over a summer job, it pretty much means you are scrounging as a single person, let alone considering having any sort of family. (It is only enough if you can latch on to a spouse who is earning at least that.)
As for whether one should take out hundreds of thousands in loans and spend a decade training, only to earn the same amount as the manager at McDonalds, I tend to agree that this is a very silly thread...

 

[75969]

At least where I live, it would be virtually impossible to support a family (say, 2 parents and 2 kids) and own a house in a safe neighborhood and a car or two on that salary. And my current salary is much more than 30K a year (but still much less than typical physician salaries). So my answer is: no.

Not necessarily true---My parents make under 30K combined (~20K actually); my sister and I grew up in a decent neighborhood (very safe IMO....more safe than the neighborhood I am in now!). I never even realized that we were in "poverty level" until I entered college and actually had to look at their tax returns.

**The amount of $$ that would satisfy a person is dependant soley on that person....my answer: Yes

 

[Shredder]

This is such a ridiculous thread. We need to delete it.

"Who here wants to work for 30k?" What a dumb question.

Yea, I want to work and make as little as possible.

👍 translate to: "how many premeds ride high horses, and how many dont". if only it were public

 

[Suppuration]

This is such a ridiculous thread. We need to delete it.

"Who here wants to work for 30k?" What a dumb question.

Yea, I want to work and make as little as possible.

I completely agree. In fact, the entire proposition that UHC would be de facto funded by reduced physician salaries is absurd. Without completely demolishing the current system, expanding coverage to everyone would likely help increase physician incomes, as they would no longer be semi-forced to do charity work.*

Let's look at the numbers:
From the CDC: total health expenditures in the US for 2002 = $1.5 trillion.
From Himmelstein and Woolhandler of Harvard: healthcare bureaucracy in 2002 ran $399.4 billion.
Therefore bureaucratic costs = 26.6% of total expenditures.
(And yes, if you compare this to other industrialized nations, it's through the ceiling).

Now, there are about 831,000 practicing doctors in the US (based on per 100,000 population data that I can't find right now).
The last average doctor salary I saw was $237,000.
I therefore estimate that our salaries combined account for about $197 billion, or 13.1% of total expenditures.

We therefore spend twice as much on paper pushing as we do on physicians. Just let that sink in for a moment.

Also note the fact that our salaries have been flat or declining over the years, and that total healthcare expenditures are increasing by insane amounts. Just check out the CMS projections:

2006 - $2.064 trillion
2008 - $2.387 trillion
2010 - $2.751 trillion
2012 - $3.145 trillion

Thus, if expenditures for physician salaries continue their decades-long trend of stagnation, but 2012 we could account for a measley 6.3% of health care expenditures. And we're supposed to fund UHC? I think not.

As an aside, there are some who believe that funding UHC would not even cost that much, if you factor in the benefits of preventive care over ER care, and the fact that the uninsured are, as a group, reasonably healthy.

In summary, there are many, MANY problems with our system, and many possible wasy to address them, but one thing is clear: the original question posed in this poll is kinda ******ed. If we eliminated the bureaucratic waste in our system, for what we're shelling out now we could give everyone in the country Cadillac care and take home handsome pay raises. So fight the power.

*By "semi-forced" I mean providing care for patients who either A: have insurance that will not reimburse, or B: do not end up paying themselves after the fact.

 

[dbhvt]

While I am impressed by the couple of success stories of people who have made do decently on 30k, I would suggest that this is not the national norm, and simply cannot be done in most of the major coastal cities.

Let me emphasize, this is more than a couple of success stories. A very large number of people do it. I don't have the reference, but I remember a soc. study a while back asked the question: what income would be necessary to live comfortably? Other than the very top, independent of income, the response was 5% over whatever that individual made (At the top, that percentage increased slightly). I think this is playing out in this thread.

For what it's worth, here's what I posted on the other thread:

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?p=2968725#post2968725

2 additional points:

1) I agree that alot depends on where you live, and 30K means alot more in south dakota than in manhattan.

2) In the other thread, tigress mentioned that maybe these 30Kers weren't able to get by, and mentioned a book about what it is like to make min. wage in this country. Just to clarify, minimum wage is way below 30K a year (I'm pretty sure it's below the poverty line).

3) It seems like most of the posters who say 30K is enough to get by have actually experienced it. Ie, these posters (myself included) are not basing their experience on summer jobs in college, but have actually spent some time in the working world, making money and paying bills.

 

[dbhvt]

In summary, there are many, MANY problems with our system, and many possible wasy to address them, but one thing is clear: the original question posed in this poll is kinda ******ed. If we eliminated the bureaucratic waste in our system, for what we're shelling out now we could give everyone in the country Cadillac care and take home handsome pay raises. So fight the power.

To repeat what I've said before. The poll question is not a practical one. (edit) It's a question about will. I don't honestly believe dropping physician salaries to 30K is the way to solve the problem.

That being said, when you go to the insurance companies, the CEOs, the underlings, the paperpushers, the accountants, the lawyers retained, the committee that came up with ICD-9 codes, etc... and you say, "Get out of here. You cost to much money. We need that money to fund universal health care." You're voice is going to carry a lot more weight and you're going to sound a lot more sincere if you say, "In addition to kicking out the bureaucrats, I'm dropping my salary by x percent in order to help fund this." No one is going to want to help you fight the power if you're getting a handsome raise in the process.

 

[Suppuration]

To repeat what I've said before. The poll question is not a practical one. I don't honestly believe dropping physician salaries to 30K is the way to solve the problem.

Ummm... okay.

That being said, when you go to the insurance companies, the CEOs, the underlings, the paperpushers, the accountants, the lawyers retained, the committee that came up with ICD-9 codes, etc... and you say, "Get out of here. You cost to much money. We need that money to fund universal health care." You're voice is going to carry a lot more weight and you're going to sound a lot more sincere if you say, "In addition to kicking out the bureaucrats, I'm dropping my salary by x percent in order to help fund this." No one is going to want to help you fight the power if you're getting a handsome raise in the process.

We've already been taking a pay cut... for the last 20 years. We've also seen massive increases in educational debt, bureaucracy, insurance, etc. I think we've already coughed up MORE than enough. The solution isn't to give them another inch, because they'll just take us another mile. It would "only" cost about $100 billion to extend government-funded coverage to the uninsured (which, to give it some perspective, would amount to 4.15% of total federal budget outlays for fiscal year 2005). Why should we pick up ANY of that tab when, like I said, the paper pushers are sucking up four times that amount?

 

[dbhvt]

I'm not saying it makes sense, I'm just saying I don't think politics works that way. People don't want to hear a doctor whining that they have already suffered enough finiancially. People are not moved by complaining, however reasonable the complaint may be.

 

[Suppuration]

I'm not saying it makes sense, I'm just saying I don't think politics works that way. People don't want to hear a doctor whining that they have already suffered enough finiancially. People are not moved by complaining, however reasonable the complaint may be.

People also want doctors who are both happy and well compensated. They might not realize it, directly, but folks generally enjoy knowing that their surgeons are bright, motivated, skilled, content, and had to bust their respective asses to get where they are. Somewhere in the back of the collective American consciousness is the realization that screwing with the physician production and compensation system too badly will result in them getting substandard care... or worse.

 

[USCTex]

It's sort of a neat poll and thought idea. But, as has been said,

a) Reducing physician salary is not an effective way to fund UHC when you look at the percentage of healthcare i makes up.

b) as this poll shows, although there are many altruistic people participating in this poll apparently, physicians would never allow their income to be reduced as scuh.

c) if this did happen it would significantly influence the quality of people applying to medical school (as the number of overall applicants would plument).

 

[dbhvt]

or worse.

a disgruntled surgeon leaving a retractor in your abdomen.