The base rate of the profession is around 250k per year. Specialities are not included in that calculation.
Specialities are closer to 400k to 500k per year.
This is not natural. This is 130+ years of regulatory capture. Other countries pay their physicians half as much.
Not to mention outcomes are basically the same.
That $250k salary looks outrageous because you're ignoring all of the opportunity cost that went to get there.
* 4 years of med school. $40k tuition/year. $160k in principal total.
* 4 years of med school. No salary. $100k/year opportunity cost. $400k total.
* 4 years of residency. $60k salary. Yay, she's making an income. Boo, it's literally all going towards student loans. $80k/year opportunity cost. $320k total.
* Congrats, you're now an attending. You're living the "good life". Oh, don't forget that $160k of tuition, it's full cost is roughly $300k.
* $400k + $320k + $300k = ~$1M in the hole. That doesn't include a bunch of misc. expenses - exams, re-locations, interviews (residency programs don't pay for your travel).
During that entire time, my wife is consistently outworking me by 50% to 100%. Step exams, board exams, residency interview season (holy shit that's a stressful time), volunteering, research, etc, etc, etc. Even when she's an attending, she still has a bunch of things she needs to do to maintain her licensing.
This is also $1M in the hole in a critical part of building a life/savings. A good portion/all of that $1M could be going towards long term investments like retirement, college funds, etc. We're basically 10 years behind on retirement. That's easily $500k of interest lost.
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Physician pay is only 8.6% of health care costs [0]. You could cut physician salaries in half and the effects on your health care would be trivial.
[0] https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/compensation-issues/ph...
Also you can look at the training of all the recent physicians, - many are from abroad. Same thing that the Silicon valley industry has been doing , hiring foreigners at lower pay. Education for physicians abroad is FREE. Whereas here you have to go to college (>50k a year tuition x 4) AND medical school (60k a year x 4) and then training 3-7 years at low income (40k a year) and crap life style.
That being said, the overall point is correct. There is a HUGE opportunity cost to becoming a physician. People would rather ignore that because it doesn't support their argument. It's much easier to cherry pick point-in-time data without looking at the larger picture.
So talking about what doctors make might be misleading.