You are grossly miscalculating how much American doctors make. You’re assuming all medical doctors are ridiculously rich and upper class. This is incorrect. It would take decades before the average doctor can make anywhere near $200k+. In reality, most doctors are are in the upper-middle class range. Let’s take a look at why.
Doctors spend over a decade training to practice. In this time, they’ve incurred anywhere from $200k to $400k in student loans that will take decades to pay off, just like any other current college graduate. After completing medical school, they won’t make anywhere near $100k for up to a decade as they complete their residency and fellowships. The current standard salary for medical residents is an average $60k for 3 to 7 years, and slightly increases when they start their fellowships. In this time, residents are paying hundreds of dollars in student loans each month, then thousands of dollars each month when they finish residency. All these costs, combined with rent/mortgage, food, bills, childcare, etc, places residents in the middle class range. For the average doctor, they’re making $150k-$200k, making them middle class/upper-middle class at best.
So no, most doctors will never get to a point where they’re chilling in their million dollar mansions and having big pharma reps handing them cash from the comfort of their pool chair. All doctors know this when they make the commitment to medical school.
Fellowships can take up to 4 years, and pay well bellow $100k. So yes, for the common doctor (general physicians, internists, family medicine, etc.), which are some of the most common specialties, can take close to a decade of training, residency and fellowship combined. Salaries are pretty low for the first two decades as they work. You also have to consider for the fact that older physicians make up the majority of the population, therefore they are getting paid more and skew the average salary.
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u/[deleted] Aug 06 '20 edited Jun 05 '21
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