Why do many doctors complain they don't make enough money?

Question

Many salaried physicians in a specialty make well over $300,000 a year on average (according to salary.com). Many surgeons make far above that number.

Many physicians complain that with the nature of our current US health care system, physicians have to "work hard to pay their bills". Apparently, I find that hard to believe because of the salaries I am seeing. The cost of malpractice insurance is not that high (compared to salary) and student debt should easily be paid off. The cost of running a private office still does not add up, considering the fact that many physicians work for hospitals and in group practices. Is something wrong with my equation or are physicians just plain greedy?

Answer 1

Most doctors do not make a lot of money. Your stats states that 300k is the average which means there can be doctors making 65k or 1million. In statistics, looking at the average as an indicator can be very misleading. Try and find the median salary.

So after taking away the expenses of insurance and overhead (depending on specialty insurance premiums can be significant)  most doctors make a modest living.

In reality even if they did make $250k per year,  that is not a lot of money these days. Due to inflation and monetary policy in the US, $250k per year is not much.

Use the calculator below and you will see that $250,000 in 2008 buys only $155,000 of stuff back in 1990.

So in reality the doctor making 250k is like a doctor  who made 155k back in 1990.

Answer 2

I've read that often-time when dr's first get out of medical school they automatically go into the mindset that they get to go out and get the big fancy houses and new cars and all, thus racking up alot of debt before they do actually see the big bucks.  This may be part of it, I don't know.

Answer 3

Because they are just like teachers.Only I think teachers are bigger crybabies.