How much money doctors actually make

I&#x27;m a graduating medical student with a master&#x27;s in computer science. In a lot of ways CS is the polar opposite of medicine; one values derivation and automation while the other emphasizes memorization and one-on-one interactions.<p>Surprisingly, teamwork is one area where CS wins out. I&#x27;ve found that despite the professed importance of the <i>healthcare team</i>, healthcare often doesn&#x27;t function like a team at all. Doctors, nurses, PAs, patient care assistants, administrative staff, can make or break your life by providing support or creating obstacles. I think it&#x27;s a result of a inherently tiered system with a single person (e.g. the attending) on top who decides the treatment plan. In CS you almost never have a single person who is overly-trained relative to peers. Maybe you&#x27;ll have a better developer, UI designer or manager, but none of these attributes makes that person the sole decider. The pay structure in medicine reflects its hierarchical system: software managers don&#x27;t earn 10x what software developer make, whereas attendings easily make 10x a nurse&#x27;s salary.

These data would be more informative, were they also paired with vocational costs MDs also incur, usually unavoidably. Malpractice insurance, prep for board exams, for example. Note that the latter can include having to travel to conferences, or similar events, to stay current in the field, and there may not always be an employer to reimburse such costs. Likewise, insurance rates will vary between disciplines, eg. higher for radiology vs psychiatry.

Quite surprised Dermatology and Plastic Surgery aren&#x27;t the top two. Those specialities are almost unique in being the only remaining ones in which most practitioners are <i>not</i> in managed care programs so can and do charge what the market will bear.<p>If you go to an oncology conference you see a lot of paper presentations and poster sessions. If you go to the annual Derm conference there&#x27;s a whole &quot;scene&quot; in the corridors and the trade show floor is really little different from the trade show floor of, say, a car show, or the AVN awards. Maybe GDC, or maybe that&#x27;s a bit over the top. If you aren&#x27;t an unabashed fan of capitalism (which I am), you&#x27;d likely call it crass.<p>One year I was walking the show floor and stopped to look at a display of liposuction tubes -- it was beautifully laid out, like a cross between a bunch of Cala Lilies and an pipe organ rank. The salesdroid came over and said only two things: - &quot;Hello, Doctor! Do you do liposuction in your clinic?&quot; (I shook my head) - &quot;Well you can easily get an additional $3000&#x2F;day from these babies.&quot;<p>I&#x27;m also surprised radiologists score so high because a lot of the analysis has been farmed out to India. And since that entailed a fully digital stack, those Indian MDs are about to be the first physicians to be replaced with DL. Perhaps the large number reflects a small residual &#x27;n&#x27;, or perhaps the radiologists have been able to hang on even though part of the job is outsourced -- presumably by them.

It&#x27;s funny that list almost seems like the pay scale should be inverted.<p>The most important doctors get paid the least and the least important doctors get paid the most.

This article is extremely misleading. Even though these salaries might be high, they aren&#x27;t adjusting for number of hours worked.<p>When we think of a typical &quot;salaried&quot; job, we think 40 hours&#x2F;week. This is almost certainly not the case, even for the cushiest physician specialties.<p>My girlfriend is a critical care physician about to enter attending-hood working at a university hospital. She will be working a minimum of 50 hours&#x2F;week and with all the administrative tasks she&#x27;s being asked to do, it&#x27;ll probably be more like 60+.<p>Really we need to see hourly rates to get a better idea of what physicians <i>actually</i> make.

The doctors who live on my street drive Porsches, Mercedes-Benz and Audis. Two docs on our street own multiple Porsches each (summer, winter, racing).<p>Maybe it&#x27;s family money.<p>Then again maybe it&#x27;s taxpayers paying their salaries.<p>(location: mid-sized city in Canada)

I&#x27;ve wondered why everyone and their moms are pushing people to study computer science and STEM, but you don&#x27;t see the same push for physicians.

These pay scales are insane for the fact that doctors essentially just have to show up. This doesn&#x27;t even include management of others (aka Director roles, etc). Just literally showing up.

&gt; Despite having the same training and experience as their white peers, physicians who identified as Asian, Latino, or black received significantly less<p>What does this mean? The averaged all doctors by race? They averaged by profession and race then combined to form some sort of weighted average by race?