Richer than all their tribe

Professor Campos laments the large incomes of U.S. physicians, and it is certainly true that they make more than the sawbones in other countries. Quoting from a WaPo article, which I don't link directly due to the paywall:

By accounting for all streams of income, [a study] revealed that doctors make more than anyone thought — and more than any other occupation we’ve measured. In the prime earning years of 40 to 55, the average physician made $405,000 in 2017 — almost all of it (94 percent) from wages. Doctors in the top 10 percent averaged $1.3 million. And those in the top 1 percent averaged an astounding $4 million, though most of that (85 percent) came from business income or capital gains.

In certain specialties, doctors see substantially more in their peak earning years: Neurosurgeons (about $920,000), orthopedic surgeons ($789,000) and radiation oncologists ($709,000) all did especially well for themselves. Specialty incomes cover 2005 to 2017 and are expressed in 2017 dollars.

 

Yep, that's a lot of money. But to me it's at least as significant that the income for primary care physicians -- the most important kind as far as I'm concerned -- is far less, about $225,000/year. That's still a lot of money to us Great Unwashed, but in fairness, but in fairness physicians usually enter the workforce with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, they have sacrificed many years of their lives to extremely arduous training during which they were scantily compensated, they have very serious responsibilities, their work is stressful, they work long hours and their leisure time is often interrupted. What is more important, the vast discrepancies in income discourage physicians from entering primary care, which has created a serious shortage of primary care providers. There is a boatload of reforms we need to make in how we pay for medical services, but this is an important one.