Not true nowadays. Don't be surprised to see med grads suing the med schools in years to come, similar to the lawsuits filed by recent law school grads against their schools. To make good money as a specialist, you have get into a good established practice or have the capital to start your own. Otherwise, you are unemployed.
Again, my wife is a physician in training with job offers in hand... and I know many, many physicians. There are simply no "unemployed" physicians (assuming basic competency, i.e. board eligible/certified). Private practice is rapidly disappearing, replaced by larger medical chains. That does mean it's harder for a cardiologist to make $1mm+, or a FP to make $500k+.... But as long as the payers are there (i.e., US government) paying a guaranteed rate for procedures / visits, then base physician compensation will not change. Medicine is a completely different animal from law.
I'm tired of reading heech's bs, especially when he only talks about the pros of the profession. Before anyone goes off to try and get the MD degree, I suggest they read up on the negative aspect of the profession and factor that into their decision. I provide links to counter heech's bs below: The Deceptive Income of Physicians http://benbrownmd.wordpress.com/2010/06/20/informedconsent/ Young doctors in debt http://money.cnn.com/2007/11/16/pf/young_doctors.moneymag/index.htm Ali Binazir Why You should Not Go To Medical School http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/abinaz...go-to-medical-school-a-gleefully-biased-rant/
My fiancee is a specialist of almost 10 years. Medicine is not the magic cash cow everyone thinks it is. Malpractice insurance costs have hampered the practices, while healthcare insurance payouts are getting harder to battle for. Whatever US government pays is negligible, if it's not premium insurance, then it is barely profitable. Patients are being avoided due to their insurance, which simply is not worth the time that the patient takes up. People don't believe what crap is happening inside medicine, all due to the dollars & cents. It's crazy. Hospital business is getting tougher & tougher with hospitals closing, rather than opening. Also, they don't pay what they used to, as finances are tougher and there is more supply of doctors available. When you factor in the costs of med school, it's actually not a wise decision to pursue medicine unless you parents or close family friends are handing you a practice, you have capital to buy/start a practice or you have an absolute passion for the profession (which most med students nowadays do not, they just think money). 10-20 years ago, it was not like this.
Anecdotally, I'm also told it's a very systematic career path (medicine). This can be a negative if you're caught on the wrong side and is also very political in nature. Practically I don't know how true that is. ...imo, I'd be more interested in the private field of medical innovation/advancements. There looks to be lots of opportunity on this front in the coming years.
Utoh, jinxu is tired of my BS... devastating. How's your guaranteed profit strategy doing, by the way? If you haven't sold it yet, I'll buy it. How about I bid however much you made trading it over the last 12 months? I don't have a problem with those links. Almost all of them are written from the POV of physicians who argue they should make more. Physicians, alas, often suffer from a horrible myopia when it comes to the "rest of the world". For example, in one of those links, one of the physicians claims that at his 10-yr hs reunion, "all of his classmates" who had gone into business were making much more than the $130k he was bringing in every year. Now... those of you from the real non-physician world, how realistic is that? There's also the long-winded analysis of the "median" internal medicine physician (making $200k gross a year) versus median high school teacher. The math is pretty comical, really... But the bottom line, for the non-physicians out there considering this as a career path: - the downside, you will have to work OBSCENELY hard during residency (that part is not at all exaggerated), and you will likely come out with about $250k in debt. - the upside, if you are simply *accepted* into medical school, you have a better 90% chance you will make at the VERY least $130k a year by the time you complete residency. (And if you graduate medical school, 99% chance.) You will have complete job stability. You will still have a tremendous amount of respect. Your future practice will also likely offer you a complete debt forgiveness program. Frankly, I still think it's a slam-dunk. After all... what's the attrition rate in banking...? What percentage of undergraduate business/econ majors end up in careers that start at $130k year, with complete job security? Don't get me wrong, I'm extremely happy with my specific career. But speaking as a father to two young kids, I sure as hell wouldn't counsel them against becoming a physician. I think it's a tremendous career.
One thing that's really scary about medicine... if you piss off the wrong people in residency, they can destroy you. They can end your career, and essentially end your life. Residency directors + attendings have the complete, total authority to permanently make you unemployable as a physician, while you still have your $250k in debt to deal with. As far as medical innovation/advancements... I used to (and still dabble) work as an angel investor. I've invested in quite a few medical technology companies. It's a long, long painful process. Brilliant technologies often shrivel up and die because you can't get billions in capital, over many years, to get it through the regulatory process. And even then, it can still fail because 60 year old physicians are too stubborn (and rich) to change the way they work. (Look at the slow uptake on EMR, for example.)
Not that it matters...but all I will say is that it's been taking off and taking off fast. And I didn't have to pay 5 figures of debt to figure it out.
You really have to quantify that. I'm not "everyone", and I'm not saying its a "magic cash cow". I'm saying that medicine remains one of the best options possible for a freshman/sophomore in college considering their future career. The pay and job security is tremendous. "All the crap" you refer to, I'm intimately familiar with much of it, and none of that changes my opinion. I partly agree with you, but I also strongly disagree with you. We looked at purchasing a medical practice for my wife... IMO, entrepreneurship is great, and being your own boss is great. You know what we found? Practices are basically without value, these days. (At least GP practices, no idea about pediatric surgery like your wife... although I suspect it's similar.) Older retiring physicians would love to sell them at any cost, but no one is buying them... Medicine has without a doubt changing very dramatically over the last 10 years. The day of the small independent practice is dying quickly, and the era of general practictioners' making $500k+ is probably over (like I said 3-4 posts ago). The day of doctors working as a cog in the bigger machine is here. However, these doctors continue to be compensated EXTREMELY well (in risk adjusted terms) by the standard of any other career choice.
You're considering entering medicine for absolutely the WRONG reasons, and you won't make it through. If you had medicine in your heart you wouldn't be on this forum. Study econ, learn the value of cash flow in your personal finances, and study price action for 10,000 hours with no indicators. Good luck. Also, lose the cocky attitude. Nobody on the street wants to hire a dick.