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Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Must have been rock stars at that. Cardio?
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Nah. Just very much wanted in smaller communities. My cousin-in-law has a very, very sweet deal in Longview, Texas. My cousin, his wife, doing straight up internal medicine in a hospice setting, makes a fraction of what he does. They graduated one and three in their medical school class and excelled at their respecitve residencies in one of the top teaching hospitals in the country. Theoretically, they should be on par with one another, financially.
I think that some physicians are grossly over-paid and some are grossly under-paid. Depends on the specialty and how reimbursement works in their areas or specialties. Dermatologists rake in the cash when pediatricians can barely make enough to cover overhead. My anestheisologist made more than my surgeon when I had my gallbladder taken out a few years ago.
We do a horrible job of aligning reimbursement with effectiveness. Look at stents, for example. No evidence whatsoever that they do any better than drugs. But cardiologists get a heck of a lot more money if they hang out in the cath lab shoving metal up arteries than if they hang out in a clinic writing prescriptions and talking to their patients.
Medical school education is really, really expensive. But, so are a lot of other schools. You don't hear people crying over the people who spent $40k on cooking school and then end up in $18k a year jobs afterwards. There are thousands of newly minted lawyers out there in mortgage sized debt who can't find jobs at all, much less jobs that can put a dent in the loans.
I'd love to cut down on the cost of education borne by the student. But my legislature--and the legislatures of a lot of other states--aren't particularly interested in that sort of thing.
