<p>^Well, I am not a doc. but I have worked all until my delivery date and did not take any days after, except we both saved all vacations and were lucky that D. was born in October, so we ran into various holiday days off, so using all of that for one year and vacations for the next we were able stay with her until she turned 4 months old, then it was baby sitter time. However, I continued brest feeding until she was over 2 y old, working full time, not a biggy. The biggy starts when they are 5 y o. At 7 y o she was in 5 activities after school, we did not come home sometime until 10 pm. Never had time to pick up dinner either, all was warmed up in microwave and consumed in a car. Maybe that was the reason why she was not that expansive. Now she is expansive, but we do not mind paying for her Med. School, she deserves it.</p>
<p>Miami,</p>
<p>I’ve seen you make the same typo several times. I don’t think your daughter would appreciate being called “expansive” :)</p>
<p>^She does not care about my typing, she would have not noticed it at all. Sorry, I do not care enough to check, not good at typing (…and spelling)</p>
<p>I guess parents are allowed to call their daughters expansive. :p</p>
<p>Announcing it to the world OTOH…</p>
<p>I agree that you cannot pay a debt of $200k in 2 years as a doctors, even if you are a specialist. Malpractice is at least 50k +(that is why you see that a lot of doctors do not carry insurance ,but they are running all the risk), overhead is around 35% if you have a fully equipped office with staff (new laws require electronic medical records and that’s not cheap). Even if you are an employee you will still need to pay for licenses, malpractice, CME credits,academy meetings, etc. then you have to eat…</p>
<p>…and the compensation is going to be down because of the new law…so some mihgt never repay, period…</p>
<p>@ddhawan- highly unlikely that overhead is 35%, unless the doctor has no office staff whatsoever. My Cardiology practice is about as lean as we can get, and our overhead is 50%.</p>
<p>You are right. I was trying to stay conservative calculating 50% is def a more accurate number.</p>
<p>As I have mentioned before, those who went this road themselves are trying to put their children thru the same for free. They do not care about ranking / prestige, yes, MDs do not want their children to have Medical School loans, they know exactly the effect of these loans on your life style and they also know that ranking/prestige does not matter.</p>
<p>It is certainly true that overhead will be 50-60% in an established primary care practice, but a physician beginning in practice will have to pay overhead before beginning to draw a salary, so it might be better to think of overhead as a fixed (but ultimately growing) cost. A physician going into private practice will have to pay the overhead and then build the practice in order to make a salary. This practice model no longer seems practicable or desirable. Most physicians just out of residency are looking for salaried positions with paid vacations and CME. In my years of practice I was never able to take more than ten days vacation a year and received no income during that time while continuing to pay overhead.</p>
<p>No one should go into medicine strictly for financial gain. The training and the work can only be justified by personal satisfaction. I loved being a pediatrician: it didn’t make me wealthy and I never thought it would. The unhappiest doctors I know make much more money.</p>
<p>My experience with the Canadian, Irish, and British medical systems has led me to the belief that I would have preferred a lower salary without having to deal with third-party payers. The insurance companies make huge profits by cheating both patients and doctors.</p>
<p>
Hallelujah! Only in America - the home of the “paper pusher” culture!</p>
<p>It is true that the paper pusher is the real driver of the cost of health care. Pre-approvals, resubmissions, denials, revisions, all done by people with no or little interest of expediting care or reducing paperwork. Socialized systems have also drawbacks. I remember speaking with a Swedish thoracic surgeon that said that his hospital had the lowest mortality rate in all Sweden so everyone wanted to have surgery there. He only made a salary, even though the number of cases he saw everyday continued to grow. In Canada doctors are many times cap in the number of surgeries allowed per year, Patients needing cataract surgery for example have to be booked a couple of years in advance , due to the length of the waiting lists. If by the time the patients name is up the cataract is still not mature enough for surgery, the patient’s name go back to the waiting list.</p>
<p>Socialized medicine works for the healthy. If you are really sick, you have to seek help outside of the system or more likely than not, you will expire before your turn in the waiting line. This is from my personal experience and also from the current experiences of close friends from over the border. When you let gov. to decide about your health, you better have $$$ to allow yourself choices outside of the system or you are going into the box prematurely (which gov. wants anyway to insure the lower cost).</p>
<p>@streampaw
</p>
<p>Wow, you have a bright career waiting for you, either:</p>
<ul>
<li> in Congress, writing a balanced budget, or</li>
<li> in a college financial aid office, determining what families EFC should be
</li>
</ul>
<p>Minimal expenses still include paying off martgage, car loans, …etc. I tell you that we do not have any of it, no mortgage, no car loans, no other dependents, live in one of the cheapest regions of the country, not clothes shopping (because I am very lazy and hate shopping), trips to work are very short for both (less gas than most others), almost no care repairs (we have very nice cars) we live very very cheaply, we do not even go out or the movies (again, I hate both), and we spend much much much more than 45K / year on our living. There is no way, period!</p>
<p>I should perhaps clarify my comment about health care in Ireland, Canada, and the UK. The Irish system is in terrible shape. Most Irish-trained doctors emigrate immediately after training. On the other hand, family members in Canada and Scotland are happy with their medical care. However, I recognize that there are serious problems with socialized medicine, and I know that the Scandinavian countries are having to re-think their systems.</p>
<p>Nevertheless something needs to be done to break the stranglehold that the insurance companies have on medicine in America. In addition to some of the problems cited above, pediatricians and family practitioners can describe the need to invest thousands of dollars in vaccines with reimbursement at or below cost. Moreover, the ‘good will’ that we paid dearly for when we bought our practices has essentially become the property of the insurance companies: sign on with them at ‘discounted fee for service’ or they will send your patients elsewhere.</p>
<p>“On the other hand, family members in Canada and Scotland are happy with their medical care”
-Absolutely NOT true. Just few days ago talked to a friend who waorks in the USA and have fmily in Canada (he is Canadian). He said that Canadian system works for the healthy. If you do not want ot expire waiting in line for your turn for some critical test / care, you better go out of the system. C’mon, it is known fact that some go to Detroit (after taking mortgages on their houses or deep into other family funds). They know that they will not survivie waiting in line, period. Well, soon none of us survive, as one example, cannot have cancer after 76 by new law, it is not covered. I guess, Indian doc. (trained in the USA) will start making even more $$. New law is a good thing for them!</p>
<p>Actually, by ‘family members’ I was referring specifically to members of my family who live in B.C., Ontario, and Scotland. I will grant that the Canadians among them are, thankfully, still healthy. I have often talked about medical care with my Scottish relatives and with a friend who recently retired from his GP practice. There are serious problems in England, especially in the London area, and I am sure there are Scots who are unhappy with the system. </p>
<p>Frankly, I am not sure why a reference to the specific experiences of members of my family should have engendered such an intemperate response.</p>
<p>There is no reason to praise the system that is originally designed to help sick and absolutely does not work for those who are very sick, it simply let them die to keep the cost down. Interesting development, isn’t? but not in a positive direction. Thankfully, there will be more doc. who operate strictly on a cash basis, no insurance, no gov.<br>
But back to original question, unless you live in your parent’s basement and eat crumps from their table (I guess this is the picture of future life for some people who went literally thru some torturous time preparing for one exam or another, staying up thru many nights on their feet in some rotations,…etc. to pursue thier dream), well, unless you do that, there is NO WAY under the sun you will repay your $200k loan in 2 years. It is much better to go to UG for free and negotiate the financing of Med. School with your parents. This is a doable plan pursued by good number. The plan of repaying loans in 2 years is not doable by any measure.</p>
<p>“There is no reason to praise the system that is originally designed to help sick and absolutely does not work for those who are very sick, it simply let(sic) them die to keep the cost down.”
Other than a blizzard of anecdotes, do you have any objective evidence-at all, of any type-to support this over-the-top assertion?</p>