Obamas most despicable act to date.

[Blubeard]

DaBuddahN said:

TheRealMafoo said:

ManusJustus said:

HappySqurriel said:

It would be impossible to attract people who could do these same jobs without offering them a similar or greater salary.

Then why are there doctors in France, Britain, and Sweden?  If you look at America, many of our professions pay much more than similar developed countries. 

Yeah, if you forced a pay cut on doctors they would go into some other high paying proffesion, so you would have to do a major overall and bring down many of overpaid salaries down at once.  Thats not possible under current conditions, but it doesnt mean it doesnt need to be done.

As for a doctor's education, the average doctor can expect to make $200,000 a year (keep in mind that family doctors make much less than specialists, and thus are pulling the average down).  As for your calculations, the only thing that makes becoming a doctor look less appealing is the cost of education, which is obviously high since many of their deans and teachers are making a ton of money (At my university, the president makes $800,000 a year and the dean of medicine makes over $500,000, not to mention numerous other deans and professors as well as a neurosurgeon doctor who make over a million a year).  As long as these people have these salaries education is going to be coslty, so all doctors will need to make a lot of money to pay them off, and thus charge patients a lot of money.

If your a doctor, one of the most lucrative fields to go into is Plastic Surgery. The cost of medical care in that field has gone down, while everything insurance companies cover has gone up. If the cost of the doctor was the issue, both fields would have grown in cost the same.

Hell, if you are a self employed truck driver in the US, you can make well over 100k. Averaging 200k as a doctor does not seem that high to me.

I'm sorry, but that is a bit of cherry picking there dude. Self-employed Truck drivers make a lot of money, also they put in a lot of hours. It's not a fair comparison in the very least. Sure, mentioning a truck drivers making that much money sounds amazing because you really don't have to have a strong education to be a truck driver. But let's be fair, and compare a doctor to something that requires a strong education, like engineering. The average engineer will make between 55 - 70k in the US, starting off. He might be able to work his way up to 80k in 4 to 5 years. 80k vs 200k... The difference is astounding. =/

The main thing to remember here is that necessity generally determines salary. You probably aren't going to make a lot of money for standing outside in a chicken suit as an advertisment because people qualified for that job are in abundance. However if you are an auto mechanic that specializes in cars and parts that are no longer manufactured you generally will get paid more for being so far and few between.