I've read all of the posts prior to mine and it seems everyone focuses on the hardships and difficulties of becoming a doctor.

I'm a surgeon and I can certainly agree that the four years of college, four years of medical school, and five years of residency with 100-hour weeks throughout were the toughest of my life. I don't expect anyone to care about that, though.

I am a results oriented person. When it comes to your health, so is everyone I've ever treated. I've never had a patient ask me how hard I tried in med school or how tough residency was when I tell them I have to perform major surgery on them or a loved one. They only care if I can do it and do it really well.

There are really good business men and really bad ones. No one whines about how much Warren Buffet or Bill Gates makes and they would gladly choose to have them handle their business needs over some guy in a strip mall.

So here it is, plain and simple: America is founded on free trade and market forces. You go offer the best and brightest young people 15 years of hellish training in exchange for mediocre salaries and massive debt, and then you tell me how comfortable you'll be when you see the guy standing over you with a scalpel 15 years later. Surprisingly, he has a bit of a tremor and is sweating profusely. Why? because the best and the brightest knew better than to go into medicine. This guy had a C- average and isn't very good with his hands but thought medicine was a good fall back plan. He wishes he could join the best and the brightest working on wall street but they don't return his calls and are glad they didn't flush their potential away on a dead end career like surgery.

I went in to surgery to help people when the most need help and I love it! I traded my 20's for it. I haven't had a social life for 10 years, am 160k in medical debt, and don't leave my town for very long so I don't abandon my patients -- and I love it.

But is that really mutually exclusive to wanting to make a comfortable living as well?

As a surgeon in practice for 10 years years I can tell you that we are very underpaid. It took four years of college, four years of medical school, six years of surgery residency (90-120 hour weeks) and two years of fellowship training before I could go out on my own. Not counting my undergraduate education, that adds up to 12 years of brutal training with a huge amount of debt. I missed out on my 20's and early 30's because of the difficult schedule (5 a.m. rounds suck). When I am removing an esophagus that has a tumor invading into the trachea, the patient's life is in my hands and in a blink of an eye that life can be lost. The stress is tremendous but the reward is minimal. Medicare is the absolute worst and soon most docs will no longer accept it because it will not become possible to cover overhead costs. I an not asking for the the millions an actor or athlete makes but it is not unreasonable to be able to make enough to provide for your family and get out of debt.

Poster no. 18: Anyone who says getting in to medical school is the hard part, didn't. Poster no. 14: I didn't know a soul - I, and all of the people I know who went to school, got in the same way: by working harder than the rest of you who didn't.

I haven't slept in three days because I was at my office, then in-house call all night. I left the hospital the following midday and took my wife to brunch for her birthday, but got cut short when one of my OB patients, a 17 year old girl with a complicated pregnancy, went into labor, and I stayed up all night and delivered her baby boy around 5 a.m, but he was born without an anus, so I spent part of the morning arranging emergency surgery, then went back to work and was there longer than I intended because one of the stroke patients I was consulted on had a different neuro exam than I saw several hours prior. So I ended up managing her until the neurosurgeon could take over. Then I worked the rest of the day and went home, visited with my two year old and four year old for about 15 mintues before falling asleep. I got a nap, then got up to do my charting from my clinic patients - had some labs to follow-up. This was my weekend. I still have another week to go before I get a day off, and that will be used to "catch up". This is my life. This has *been* my life for the last nine years. I am only $90,000 in debt because I lived in self-imposed poverty while in college and medical school. I have never taken a vacation and I drive the same car I bought 14 years ago. I make 35K a year because I am a resident. I love my profession. I never wanted to have a 'normal life', and I am certainly not motivated solely by the dollar, but I do look forward to having a nicer life someday. Does that make me so bad? No one seems to have this sort of animosity towards 9-5 investment bankers, but maybe they should. We argue that people who have the skills necessary to save lives make too much money and yet we have no qualms whatsoever about paying people whose only skill is catching and throwing balls millions. Sorry for the poor grammar, I just don't have the energy or brain power right now to concoct a decent non-run-on sentence.

I would say get all the doctors from China and India. Medical care is much better there anyway! I was in China about a week ago, and I got sick, and the doctor refused to take any money, as all he did was check me!

if you are able to get into the medical school, school won't be that hard for you. Everyone has to work hard in his major or study, and not everyone earns as much as doctors. Well, looking from the other perspective, doctors are doing things about life and death. The human body is quite complicated. It is really important for a medical school student to understand details about what he is studying, and remember for the rest of his life for further applications on other related knowledge. For other majors, expertise may not as highly required as being a medical student. What direct life damage will you cause if you put down a wrong phone number as an office secretary? If you are smart enough to get into medical school and earn that much, you better not get into any lawsuits because of malpractice.

I am a physician. The payment per unit of service I provide has declined by about 40 percent since I began practicing 16 years ago, due to Medicare cuts, and decreased payments by insurance companies. That means that unless I see 40 percent more patients each day, my income declines. During that time, the bureaucrats have created increasingly complicated rules that affect my office and my hospital and surgery center, making patient care ever more labor intensive and more expensive. More paperwork, more hoops to jump through and more salaries to pay to get it all done means less time for patient care and more cost. Now our government has decided that electronic medical records are going to fix many of our problems. And they will require that all doctors' offices implement this technology in the near future. As an enthusiastic embracer of technology, I will tell you that this will create as many problems as it will fix. And it will be yet another burden on physicians. I am on call this weekend which ties me down and limits my activities for the weekend. I have been called in to see one patient whose problem was more perceived than real. My time reassured the patient and allowed someone to have a less anxious weekend. The patient's HMO will pay me less than a plumber or electrician gets for a weekend call. No, insurance companies do not pay more than usual for my services after hours or on weekends! The rest of the time on call generates no income and yet prevents the freedom of a normal weekend. Medical economics has taught me something that is less theoretical than this debate. I will work harder and get paid less as time goes by. Experience has proven this. What this means to you as consumers of medical care, I cannot predict. So far it has not reduced the cost of your health care. It has reduced the number of applications to medical school and it has shifted the demographic of who actually applies. The quality of any business, including the health care business, will be determined by the quality of people working in it. As the country debates how to reform health care, we all need to remember that the men and women working in health care will determine the experience of those who receive health care. We must hope that whatever changes we make in our system motivate high quality people to choose health care as a profession.

Medical school is just a brainwash. True health and modern medicine are about as related as Jack Lalanne and an Isreali Wino. Grow up folks. Modern medicine is a huge scam. Doctors kill weekly. Hospital staff too. It's all about the money and the ability to kill without penalty. If America really cared, they would close all tobacco companies. Good health is the responsibility of the individual. Abuse the body with bad habits and you'll find no bagel chomping GP who can reverse your mistakes. He'll swear he can. But BMW payments are his only focus.

The first post is incorrect. i made it through medical training and "knew" no one. I'm a midwest boy, son of a fireman. i just worked hard. i was lucky that math and science came easy. you can get into medical school and residency on your own merit, many people do. i frequently hear things like one post stating doctors should want to work in medicine for altruistic reasons--not reimbursement. Of course their are great physicians who do not *care about the salary *but* there are also some brilliant individuals out there who want to make a lot of money (not a crime yet). these talented individuals will make money; they can do all kinds of stuff; but we need to keep some of them in the field of medicine--it takes money to do that. we have all had someone waiting on us at the local pub, or fixing our toilet, or designing something for us and they were super nice. they loved their job and had a great "bedside manner," but they were not that great technically-- mediocre at best. knock the doctors' salary down enough and thats what you'll get--plenty of nice docs, still some really great ones technically speaking, but fewer will go into medicine. i don't mind having Joe the Plumber mess around with my toilet for 30 percent longer than a better master plumber would, especially if Joe is nice. i don't want to be under general anesthesia 30 percent longer in the hands of a mediocre (but nice) surgeon taking out a benign tumor that the altuistic (but incompetent) radiologist called a cancer. you want the best? you have to pay or do it yourself-- has it been different from this, ever?

I disagree. As a professional Engineer (PE). I have almost as much time in training as a doctor. I applied to medical school with my friends in high school, but did not have the high powered letters of recommendation necessary to get into medical school, so I went into engineering. how many doctors can do analytical calculus? Not many. Doctors get paid so much because of politics. The average person cannot get into medical school without knowing someone.

Doctors shouldn't have to work so hard in the first place for their training. In the first part of their lives they are underpaid. Doctors: The exploited become the exploiters in the second half of their lives. All the money in their bank accounts means the banks can lend more money that drives up the price of our houses. Our mortgage interest becomes the interest in their bank accounts! Messed up government regulation and land ownership laws.

i just was talking to a fairly upper middle class mom who said doctors make too much money. I said, 'they go to school for 12 years, and they are in debt for 20. i dont understand why you wouldnt direct that at movie stars or athletes. -- silence . i am not a doctor. i dont even know one personally but i certainly dont want a doctor to get out of school and think he is not allowed to have a decent living. where did this class envy come from???? its so disappointing. the producers in this country are where we get our tax revenue. certainly not from the non producers or goverment employees. is that what we want doctors to become?

In the state of Alabama, the opposite is true about malpractice lawsuits. The malpractice laws here are based on a 163 year old code from when we were bleeding people to release evil spirits. Back in the 70's, Alabama was like any state with a lot of malpractice lawsuits but when the Republicans took over, that totally reversed. There are very few malpractice suits filed here because lawyers know they can't win them and talk clients out of it due to the costs and inability to win. In 2007, we had 36 malpractice suits statewide... only three were on and two were overturned on appeal with one being gross negligence.

My mother died as a result of a massive radiation overdose and while everyone was in full agreement that the overdose was malpractice because the radiologist made huge mistakes... I couldn't find one lawyer willing to take my case for malpractice. We even had a medical review board say it was malpractice but the only thing lawyers were willing to do was file wrongful death which would require up to $40,000.00 from me or more because of all the appeals doctors have.

Then two years ago, a doctor put me on incorrect medications that aren't supposed to be mixed. Ruined my health, cost me my job and I lost everything. I am now permanently disabled fighting for Social Security and Medicare and had to fight to get food stamps and help from HUD which gives preferential treatment to women and families over single men. Could I sue? Not one lawyer would take my case even though they and others again confirmed malpractice.

I do not know what states people are from who are blabbering on about what doctors pay for medical malpractice insurance but let me tell you that in my state a large number of people are on disability because of these quacks and here they literally do have a license to kill... and they use that license quite often.

There is a fourth, and very significant way to reduce the costs of medical practice. The law governing malpractice must be changed to limit the ridiculously large settlements made in the USA, and something must be done to reduce the number of malpractice cases. Part of that would require nuisance suits to be recognized for what they are, and be thrown out.

US citizens are the most litigation prone on the planet.

I am also a bit annoyed by the first comment to this post. My dad is a doctor, and I am an engineer. I have an enormous amount of respect for my dad. He has told me about the years that he was in medical school and residency. He said during those years he was so broke he was meticulous about turning off lights in his tiny apartment so he could save money on his electric bills. He drove an old van for years that only had a driver's seat in it until he met my mom (too much money to put in the additional seats when they weren't needed!)

These people suffer to get to where they are. I think that someone who has to go through a decade of extremely difficult training during which time other people are living a comfortable lifestyle deserve to be paid a lot more than the average person who does not have these special skills.

Also about the "does the engineer save the life by creating the heart monitor" comment, I feel that the heart monitor can only save someone's life if there is someone else there (a doctor) who can interpret what the signals on that heart monitor mean to the patient. Engineers do not directly hold human lives in their hands and they are not often sued by people if their machine or building fails. Doctors are sued by patients all the time. My dad has had 3 trivial lawsuits this year (all 3 he won). Actually one of those lawsuits was caused by a faulty piece of equipment that failed and caused my dad to make a slightly different diagnosis than he would have if the equipment had worked properly. My dad got sued, but the company that made the equipment was ignored.

None of you seem to think of how long it takes for a doctor to finally start making the "attending" level salaries. I am a doctor in a 6th year of post-medical school training, a fellow in a surgical specialty, on 24-hour emergency call *every other day*!!! My current takehome pay, after all the licensing, liability and health insurance fees have been subtracted, is barely exceeding $35,000 a year. This is for someone who is close to 40 years old with 3 children.

Yes, once all the training is completed I expect to make a decent salary. For now, however, I still have medical school debts to pay off and it was not until last year that I was able to upgrade from a Geo Metro to something larger and safer to drive. I suppose people like you think I will be overpaid once I go into private practice. On my part, after working 60-80 hour work weeks all these years, answering countless calls to the trauma bay at 3AM, fixing people's injuries in the operating room regardless of weekends or holidays, and averaging <$20,000 in annual income over the past 10 years, a 6-figure salary sounds like an appropriate compensation.

Why do American doctors make so much? Why do American doctors believe they are entitled to a higher salary than their colleagues in other countries or other professions?

Isn't the satisfaction of doing a good job helping others enough? Do you really want people in any profession working in it just for the money?

As for the comparison with Engineers - how much time and expense in educating a professional (engineer or doctor) can vary considerably depending on the country. Consider this: Does an engineer who designs a stable bridge save each life that crosses it? Will he not be held responsible for the lives lost if that engineer's bridge fails?

Does the Engineer who designs the heart monitor save the life, or does the doctor?

I am an engineer and have friends and family members who are docs. I can truly appreciate the amount of work, persistence, sacrifices that go into becoming a doctor and thereafter.

I think they deserve to be paid better than the rest of us.

To those who suggest that we should increase the supply of doctors, there is one limitation no one seems to mention: you need to be exposed to a large volume of cases to be properly trained, particularly for surgeons.

I would venture to say that places where this volume is present , with the infrastructure to teach it, is limited. Thus increasing supply is not as easy as it sounds...

To Anon,

If you think it's so easy practicing as a doctor, still they make a lot of money...then why don't you by yourself become a doctor.

People just can't become one and keep blaming why do they earn so much.

Try getting admission in Medical School, try living in those stressful years, try studying 12 hours/day for 10-12 years of your life and do nothing else, try working more than 80 hours per week during residency, try going into huge debt, try to imagine your youth was spent just only in books, try clearing medical board exams and getting good residency and fellowship, after all this if you make slightly more than others then its not a big deal.

The amount of sacrifices a doctor makes is never made by engineers, you just want everything for easy.

So my point is if becoming a doctor is so easy, working as a doctor is so easy, still get very high pay scale...then who has told you to become engineer? Just go and join a Medical School...then you will realize where you stand.

Those are very simple solutions to a difficult problem. Medical school classes have not seen a large increase recently. I couldn't tell you why. But to trust each person to self-diagnose seems like a silly idea. Hopefully you should be doing a little bit of that anyway before you decide to go to the doctor... that's one way to keep our healthcare system in decent shape and keep it from being overloaded by wasting physicians' time. My fiance is currently in medical school and the sheer amount of education and work that she puts into it (not even as a resident yet) seems to justify the cost to me. These people are professionals, but it isn't fair to compare it to engineering. Medicine is a practice and inventing a magical "machine" can't account for discrepancies between the biology of individuals. And yes, reading a CAT or MRI or X-Ray is difficult. Normal could be different for each person.

I guess I'm slightly irritated by the first posted comment because doctors are treated differently from engineers and lawyers. I don't think engineers and lawyers have to carry hundreds of thousands (and sometimes millions) of dollars worth of malpractice insurance. Like I said, medicine is a PRACTICE. Yes, doctors make mistakes and sometimes it is their fault but I think I can make a strong case that doctors wouldn't be so expensive if certain types of lawyers were limited...

Why not increase the supply of doctors in this country? Engineers and lawyers also borrow a lot of money to go to school, some borrow upwards of 100k or more but there is no quota on them? Medical school should be no different than any other field of specialty. Engineers and lawyers affect life just as doctors do.

If we included medical education starting from elementary school, then we can learn to self diagnose and not pay doctors $300/hr to prescribe salt-water for a sore throat. Is it really that hard to read x-ray or CAT photos? if you know what a normal one looked like? and have on hand a database of anomalies collected in the past that you can compare with? Should someone be paid $300k a year just to do that? Actually, you can't pay me enough to do the same task repeatedly like that; I would rather be paid to invent a machine to do it, because I am an engineer.

To summarize: Doctors do things that we ordinary people would prefer not to do. Do you want to work with sick people all day? See blood and guts? Cut people open? Listen to complaints? See people at their worst? Tell relatives that their loved ones just died? Imagine telling the same thing to people for common diseases over and over again?

There are only four ways to decrease cost. 1. reduce demand by educating ourselves about common illnesses. 2. increase supply doctors by removing the quota on them. 3. eat healthy and exercise. 4. although life is precious, it is not fair to maintain your life at the cost of the entire society. So write a living will! Hope this helps