Why Do Doctors Make So Much Money?

There is plenty of discussion about the amount of money doctors make and contentions that doctors make so much money they must automatically be rich. This profile is changing, especially as we understand the costs of medical school in terms of both time and money, the average wage of doctors, and the high costs of things like maintaining medical practice insurance. According to the US Department of Labor, in mid 2000, the median starting wage for general practitioners, those who completed three to four years of medical school after getting a bachelors degree and did at least one year of residency training, was about $137,000 US Dollars (USD). Note this is a median figure, which means half of doctors starting their careers made less than this amount. In today’s market in the US, this amount is not high and would place doctors firmly in the middle class, and in some parts of the US, this amount as a sole income would mean some penny pinching. Starting salaries for doctors who are ...  more