Are people supposed to feel sympathy for doctors who are making "closer to 7 figures than 6" working 9-4 with 12 weeks off when CMS or private insurers make cuts to reimbursements? Someone posted a link in the other thread to the former-private-practice-pathologist-turned-senate-candidate who said:
I never asked for sympathy, but if you can extrapolate from the above breakdown, I'm illustrating the reality of getting paid closer to what one is generating revenue wise and working efficiently. It shouldn't prompt you to wonder why this poor schmuck is anything but, rather it should cause you (et al) to ask yourselves
why you're working just as hard or harder and getting paid less. And if you honestly don't care because the pros of your job (location, proximity to family, free lunch, sweet lapel pin, seat next to Dumbledore) outweigh the cons (monetary freedom, autonomy, better vaca), consider that those of us who do care about getting reimbursed appropriately don't care as much about the end result as much as we do about the fairness of it--how much you get paid for how much you are putting in...not sure why it's such a bad thing to want to see a return on your work more on par with what you put in...would it be more acceptable to you if I got paid half as much? Because in order for me to get paid less, I'd have to work less or take a job that simply pays less.
His family had to "significantly cut back to their lifestyle"? Am I supposed to feel bad for this guy or something? What, his family probably had to cut back from the "closer to 7 figures" lifestyle to something more in the 300-400's range? His children might have to settle for driving a VW to school instead of a Beemer? Did he have to sell his boat? Oh the humanity! Is the average working-class American, who's probably working just as hard if not harder for much less remuneration, supposed to feel bad for this guy or something? Did his family endure even an iota as much as the families that get evicted from their homes due to unaffordable healthcare bills? We're talking different planets of suffering here.
This is the recurring fallacy encountered time and time again on this forum...it has not a single thing to do with how people spend their money, let alone how much they make. It has to do what how much of it they are keeping versus how much is getting siphoned off, and for what reason. You can't compare your income to "average working class American"....WE ALL KNOW WE'RE DOING WELL, whether we're making 250 or 350 or 850. But the people making 250 aren't doing inherently inferior or quantitatively less work than the people making 850.
Every person in this country has a "lifestyle", some more comfortable than others...but it speaks volumes that the mere verbiage conjures images of import cars and boats and illegitimacy.
Every time I bring up the possibility that maybe physicians get paid too much for some of their services and why can't we be satisfied with making an income that puts us in the top 2-3% rather than the top 1%, the response I get is, "well, what about the admins/business people who are profiting off of our work and making even more money than us?" "But what about our derm and GI colleagues who are raking it in, making a mil for 40 hours of work a week?" Yeah, all of that $hit is messed up too! But we shouldn't use the examples of people who are profiteering more effectively from a broken healthcare system as justification for why we should continue to do the same.
So you equate taking home a larger share of the revenue you generate with "profiteering more effectively"???? That's just masochistic...is the guilt you have for working in the US health system eased by the fact others take advantage of you? Or is your guilt eased when someone else suffers?
This is why people should not go into pathology--sabotage from within.
High healthcare costs are bad for society, and healthcare organizations have been taking advantage of unregulated costs for a long time. People all over SDN say the words "Universal healthcare" and "bundled payments" like they're talking about the Bogeyman, but I don't think they realize how out of touch they come across as.
And you think healthcare costs will just dwindle as payments to physicians gets whittled lower? Less than 1/4 of healthcare spending goes to physicians, and most of that goes toward practice expenses, and doesn't include med school debt payments (which other countries with national health systems don't have to worry about).
You could cut payments to physicians by 25% and the amount by which patient's would see their healthcare bills lowered would be butkus. Literally--there are stats on this, it's like <5%.
I have a really difficult time mustering up any level of sympathy whatsoever for wealthy private practice pathologists who aren't making as much as they once did due to reimbursement cuts. If your salary fell from 300k/yr to 100k/yr, sure, I feel for you, but I get the sense that this isn't what's going on. Please, anyone, correct me if any of my assumptions are egregiously misinformed.
Again, this mentality is the apex of reasons why people should not go into pathology: You not only have to struggle to maintain your practice [because there's no department chair to do it for you], there are people within your field actively working to undermine you because they perceive your career decisions as jaded, illegitimate, greed driven, posh, etc.... The higher you are on the income scale, the less legitimacy you have in justifying it...you're just "profiteering".
Trust me, you're doing a better job convincing people than I am.
