The average family doctor earns
about $220,000 per year. My peak income came nowhere near, but I’m not complaining.
When friends suggest that we earn a great deal, I agree that America pays
doctors generously.
There’s no need to defend
myself. Among problems of our health system that upset Americans, the size of
our incomes is well down the list.
Other doctors insist that
they’re underpaid, and I wish they’d shut up. Their excuses sound whiny. Every complaining
doctor beats two dead horses.
The first is what I call the
Oprah Winfrey defense.
“Oprah Winfrey (or Tom Hanks or
the chairman of Disney) makes. . . How
many lives do they save?”
Similar excuses include:
“A plumber charges. . .”
And the traditional:
“Lawyers make three hundred
dollars an hour, so. . .”
Doctors aren’t the only ones
comparing themselves to lawyers, plumbers, and celebrities. Everyone does. Worse,
almost everyone who uses this argument earns less than I do. People who feel
underpaid for their own honest labor are unlikely to agree that doctors are in
the same boat.
Number two, equally feeble, is
the trash compactor defense.
“The average American pays more for alcoholic
beverages than. . .”
“My last malpractice premium
was. . .”
“The consumer price index proves
that doctors incomes haven’t. . .”
“Ten years ago, Medicare paid
... for a cataract operation. This year
it paid a mere. . .”
The trash compactor is a machine
that converts a hundred pounds of trash into a hundred pounds of trash. A
physician using this defense doesn’t grow less prosperous.
My blogging book says that readers
lose interest when posts are long, so I’ll stop here and finish next time when
I explain why we deserve a high income.
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