Originally Posted by
Senior Skipper
Think what you will about med schools JJ, but seeing that it was my #2 career choice, I spent a LOT of time doing tons of research on medicine. I stopped short of actually attending school. Doctors take care of their own. Pilots need to do the same.
I don't think it is quite that cut and dried -- MDs are vulnerable to the same supply/demand forces, pyramidal ranking structure, prolonged training at low pay, and often work for a large corporation, similar to pilots.
I think one major difference is at the end, a lot of doctors can work for themselves in private practice and can do quite well financially with almost certainty. A full time physician working for an academic hospital has to deal with the same stuff (e.g. you should be happy to be here, so we will pay you terribly), and must often find supplemental income (moonlighting, getting external grants) because the hospital pays them so terribly. If enough people quit, then they may raise salaries, but there is a very inelastic supply. The effect is such that "big-name hospitals" e.g. Johns Hopkins, Harvard hospitals, etc. will pay their physicians much less than a corresponding private practice, because they have a surplus of applicants and people enjoy the prestige of that environment. There are mid-career MD/PhD researchers at Harvard making approximately $75,000 per year after decades of training. They could be making four times that in private practice, but choose to stay. Supply and demand. They can get smart, competent people to work at this rate, so why pay more?
I work for a large hospital conglomerate and could probably double my income if I set up shop independently, but then would have to worry about essentially running a small business, which is not really what I am interested in.
And, the field of medicine does have a significant amount of people who exit, as one of the other pilots here indicated. I have a friend that left medicine to run a construction company, and earns over twice what I do; he works one night a month covering a hospital to keep his MD license active.
The MDs that run their own practice will make much more favorable environments for the physicians, get paid more, and have a much more humane existence.
In some ways, the grass is always greener... I envy and highly respect all pilots (would trade in the Columbia 350 for an A320 any day
), and in many, many ways the public is on your side. Hopefully with lobbying efforts, public support and recognition that high salaries are needed to attract and retain the best talent, and recovery from the recession, these issues will improve with time.