You're way misinformed. Healthcare pays out decent dividends if you're a provider. The problem is the initial investment in time and money to get a degree and license to practice in any of the 50 states.
You can estimate $200k of college debt and 12 years from BS to MD to residency where you may make $45-50k a year + free lunch from drug reps. By the time you finish up, you've got to work in the trenches to dig out of the debt because it's impossible to go to school and work a side job. After that, however, you can guarantee $165k minimum annual salary. If you specialize, that number can grow quite a bit depending on where you are and what you do. Your ROI is a long play, but if you land a job with good benefits, you'll retire wealthy.
Glad it worked out for your wife but what about you? Will you need to find a new employer also?Downside is that it's in another state so we'll be moving later this spring. We wanted to get into a larger city with more things to do and associated with a major university so it's a good change.
Vdub is right on this one.
I think real Doctors deserve the high pay because of the insane amount of schooling.
The PAs, nurses, medical billers, all make entirely way too much money.
I have heard though Pharmacists will be the first to go on the upcoming bubble. Apparently they are at the beginning of the cycle that Lawyers are going through right now. Too many in school with not enough opportunities.
Glad it worked out for your wife but what about you? Will you need to find a new employer also?
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Medicare has been cutting reimbursements for years. 20 years ago, every doctor was VERY wealthy. Now, they're all well off. I can't imagine getting too much worse, or else people that want to help others will start choosing paths that take less than 11 years to start doing real work.
Funny this thread came up this week.
As an update to the OP, she recently accepted a position with a hospital that is associated with one of the top 5 pharmacy programs in the country. Half of her job will be academic precepting and teaching residents and pharmacy students, something she always wanted to do. The other half is pure clinical in areas that she enjoys staffing. She'll get dedicated project days to do research and publish studies, something she also never got a chance to do with her old job.
No more 2nd shifts, 3rd shifts, and only every 4th weekend instead of every 3rd.
Downside is that it's in another state so we'll be moving later this spring. We wanted to get into a larger city with more things to do and associated with a major university so it's a good change.
He mentioned he does EMR stuff. He'll be fine in any city that has doctors.
I don't even know if I would say well off. Last I heard, a doctor 5 years out of med school was doing lucky to make $90k after insurance premiums and associated costs.
My private doctor owns his own practice, he was living in a 1.5 mil house driving a brand new maserati 15 years ago. Now he's in a $500k mcmansion in a crowded neighborhood driving a lexus and is constantly bitching about how the federal gov't has royally screwed him and his practice.
I don't even know if I would say well off. Last I heard, a doctor 5 years out of med school was doing lucky to make $90k after insurance premiums and associated costs.
Yes, fortunately I have a career that is compatible with my wife's. If she is in a location that provides a career for her, it's highly likely I'll find suitable employment there as well.
I've got a good lead on a job right now. If that fails, I've got a consultant gig available that pays pretty lucrative amounts of money that I can do for a year until something comes up. The consulting one pays incredibly well, but it would require me to be the one that basically dumps the family for a year or two. Not the ideal option, but an option none the less.
I've got a good lead on a job right now. If that fails, I've got a consultant gig available that pays pretty lucrative amounts of money that I can do for a year until something comes up. The consulting one pays incredibly well, but it would require me to be the one that basically dumps the family for a year or two. Not the ideal option, but an option none the less.
I have a question: would you all be responding this way if it were the man leaving the children alone with mom more for a few years in order to pursue a more prosperous career for himself and his family, rather than the woman asking her husband to sacrifice in this way? Be honest...
Look OP. Your wife just found a job she will love. Mark my words, in 2-5 years she will be bored with it and want something else. It's human nature to want things that you can't have or want more....
You can't compare this to anything you do.
When you've watched patients suffer for months on end and rot away in an ICU because administration won't withdrawal medical management rights to terrible physicians it wears away at your humanity.
That's what she wanted out of.
It's not about "seeing worse shit". She has to respond to codes daily and rarely a day goes by that somebody doesn't die within a couple feet of her. She's had days where she's had to help cover wounds or do chest compressions in trama patients when in the ED. Hell I remember days when she used to work OR and would talk about walking into the room and literally seeing body parts in a bucket during amputations.
That's not it.
It's the fact that when physicians listen to the drug therapy experts and patients average 3 days in an ICU vs blatently igorning them and spending 3 months instead. Line infections, managing blood pressure ect. Knowing patients can be treated better but aren't is really the stress there.
Isn't it an incentive to prolong....make things more difficult and costly to make more money?
I got fooled too. This is someone else's bump so it's not an issue. VI explains the current situation several posts back.
My buddy's wife who is a PA(first year) makes 165k with overtime. Crazy money. Good for them, def not hating. Both my ex girlfriends who were standard nurses were both making in the 90k range.
Another guy's wife who is a nurse anesthetist makes 150k starting. That is before overtime. This is her second year of practice. She spends half of her day on her ipad waiting for things to happen and won't work more than 40 hours. Great deal. He is an attorney and we laugh about it all the time. He can go out and make 50k with his law degree from a great school and harder barrier to entry or he could have went to nursing school with his wife and be making serious coin. Where were the guidance counselors on this one haha?
That is serious guaranteed money coming out of school. This is South Florida so the prices should be pretty equal or below the rest of the country.
As for the doctors, there income has come down a little. I do a lot of doctors' tax returns and it has been reduced. However I have never seen a doctor making under 150k.
The pharmacy bubble is real. Schools popped up all over the place and started cranking out PharmD's like crazy.
Retail demand is shriveling and CVS and Walgreens are starting to close stores and consolidating down the need for retail pharmacists to remote locations.
On the hospital side it's a tale of two careers. There's a big push to empower pharmacy techs to do many of the traditional "main pharmacy" operations and squeeze out the need for high paid pharmacists to do it. But on the flip side you are seeing a huge demand for high trained, specialized pharmacists to round with treatment teams and help with the treatment plans to reduce stay and overall costs.
My wife saved her current employer close to 3.5 million last year by doing her homework and spending hours working with cardiac surgeons to change their drug practices and use different drugs that are much more cost effective. That damn near covered the payroll of her entire department. There are many other areas that they can do similar things.
I no longer consider myself a professional. It's not that I do not perform a service which merits my pay. Lots of people are around because of my intercession. Nevertheless we have less time to add value because those in charge have no idea of what we can and should do. Instead it's scripts filled per unit time that counts. It's tough for me dealing with a field that has no creative aspect, but it is a default job, not my calling. Once though I was able to do good work. Now I'm too busy.
This is a fatal flaw in managed care, and docs are fools if they think they are immune. Chains are getting into medicine and it's a matter of time until the bean counters take over entirely.
I steer everyone I talk to out of healthcare.