Is it just me, or do you feel like crap when (no offense at all) pre-meds and would-be doctors come on here asking for advice on how to break into banking? All those articles I read on how there's going to be a shortage of trained medical professionals in the next few years... half the time I'd rather boycott those threads, but folks have to chase their dreams I suppose.
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I'm probably gonna get shit for this, but w/e...
I told my friend whose pre-med this. In the long run, an IB may make more than a doctor and live a very grand life full of money, fancy cars, lavish houses, hot ass girlfriends. And doctors face brutal years in med school after med school, during residency, etc on top of rising health care costs. But in the end, all of this is meaningless because no one including health insurance companies can't take away the fact that doctors help people and treat the sick. They do a service to society and make the world a better place. Point blank, bankers can't really say that and they've done some really really low and bad things to the world.
no. 1. if a pre-med wants to choose a career solely based on money, they probably won't be a great doctor and should go to finance instead. 2. if they truly feel they'll enjoy finance more than medicine, it would be wrong to keep them in medicine
There are way more qualified applicants than there are spots in US MD/DO schools, so someone else will gladly take the seat left open by a pre-med who decides to switch into finance. The doctor shortage won't be alleviated until we build more medical schools and also increase the number of residency positions.
This too. But I think we could see decreased wages like we do in law, given that the ABA will accredit just about anything. Decreased wages => less talented applicants => inferior doctors. It is a tradeoff between supply and quality.
I think we could probably reduce the financial burden on doctors by moving to a European model of medical education, in which you major in medicine as an undergrad. I mean, we have post-bacc premed programs, where you can take an English major and have them ready for med-school in a year. Why not make the MD a 5 or 6 year program?
I honestly can't say so. I don't blame premeds for considering finance. If you can make the same money at 22 in banking as you can at 32 in medicine, the latter is a tough sell. We make doctors go through 8 years of hard science education, then a residency on par with an IB analyst program at a quarter of the pay. And, I don't know about you all, I would rather be in a conference room than an exam room in a hospital. All this for a job that pays about the same as a big 4 mid-level accountant.
We (meaning Americans, not users of this site) have done ourselves and society a disservice by making medicine so unattractive. As bad as the future of finance looks, medicine looks far bleaker. Doctors face decreasing reimbursement from insurance companies, increasing malpractice insurance premiums, and increasing government regulation.
People want highly trained doctors, but they want them cheap. We can't have it both ways and expect students to choose this path.
Bäh, I believe most would-be-doctors who wants to go into finance have no idea what they will end up doing, I would bet 2-1 for each of them that their idea of finance is models and bottles every day while working from 11 to 16 having cool chats with your coworkers and pats in the back from bosses earning 300k out of college.
No, I wouldn't feel bad. They are just trying to figure out what they want to do. If people on this forum can facilitate information about banking, it will provide them with more info to hopefully make a more informed choice. It's more important to paint a realistic picture in the day in the life rather than stressing the amount of money you are going to make.
I NEED A DOCTOR
FARTMAN
1 reason to go into finance instead of the medical field: hospitals smell weird.
It's all the regulations plus the insurance companies. Doctors are very unique in that they are ultra-specialized. Doctors don't know how to do anything else other than practice medicine. So, if the insurance companies and the government force them to take pay cuts, they have no recourse, because their next best alternative career pays much less.
This is an example of a market imperfection. In a freer market with less regulation and less powerful insurance companies, doctors would make more.
I would never be a doctor, for any amount of money. I think it is by far the toughest career and I have a ton of respect for doctors. Imo, a doctor should be the most well paid member of our society, but that is not the case. Yet another example of how backward our priorities are...(especially because we've decided to bring the hammer down on doctors, instead of say, pro athletes, whose next best alternative career is often 10x smaller in terms of lower pay).
Then why do doctors in the US get paid more than doctors in most developed countries, who also happen to have better medical care on average? This includes many European countries, who have a higher cost of living than us.
Part of that pay differential is to compensate doctors for the additional cost of training in the USA. Here we have a BA+MD requirement; in the UK, for instance, it is just a 6 year program you enter after taking your A-levels. Tuition is also cheaper there, and is often subsidized further for critical fields (eg medicine).
The USA is also a far more litigious country, and doctors must be compensated for the risk of malpractice/malpractice insurance.
Finally, many of those countries practice de facto wage setting through public insurance (UK) and cost standardization (Japan). Even in places where insurance is private, but universal coverage is guaranteed (Switzerland), doctors are paid less because insurance companies must pass their increased costs somewhere.
Remember, these guys are very nearly the Blankfein/Dimon's of their profession. They are the top percentile of the top 50% of premeds that get into a US medical school. Those of you who attended schools where premed science and GenEd science are one in the same know how cutthroat those kids are; they make Wharton look like some sort of commune.
When I was looking at that path I thought, "Ok, I am definitely top 20% here. But how confident am I that I will be top 5% at med school?" The answer was not at all.
The other countries have less free systems, so their doctors make less.
You are confusing "better medical care" with "medical outcomes". No amount of medical care is going to make up for the fact that the average American's diet consists of Dunkin Donuts for breakfast, McDonald's for lunch, and Taco Bell for dinner. If you transferred the American lifestyle over to Europe, you'd see much worse medical outcomes. The US has better healthcare, especially for the affluent (you could argue that the poor are better off in Europe, but the rich are definitely better off in the US when it comes to healthcare). Most of the best surgeons in the world, performing the most complex procedures, are located in the US. If you have the money, no place will offer you better healthcare than the US.
Spine surgeons can make up to $2.5-$4 million a year. However, if you factor in the years it took to get to that level (8 years + 5 years in Ortho residency + 1 or 2 years in a fellowship program), you wouldve made much more as a banker.
I still think surgeons have a much more stable job than bankers. I'd choose to be a spine surgeon over banker anyday if it didn't need all of that shit eating and useless biology (most surgeons dont need biology!).
i was pre-med for 2 yrs (completed all the pre-reqs to go into med school) but i suddenly got interested in finance and made the switch, leaving all my pre-med classes and work behind. i thought about the whole being a doctor = doing something good for society but i didnt buy that. doctors wanna make money just as much as everyone else and dont care about the individual. they charge ridiculous costs for their services and are responsible for many ppl suffering under that burden. if you think about it enough and extensively as i have, it will seem as though those in finance are better humanitarians than those in medicine.
Doctors are useless, bankers are the real important shit there. What do doctors do? Just play around with a couple knives, cut people open and chill a bit. Whereas bankers work their fucking asses off to help earn capital for the firm cmon, is this really even a comparison?
I met my physician last week just for the heck of a overpriced "checkup". I smacked him and said "It took you 10 years to get the same compensation as I do LOL!" . Told him to hurry up with the hepatitus vaccine shot. I thought of it and laughed - took him 8 years to learn how to stick a god damn needle into my shoulder - I could have learned that in 43 seconds.
Konig, what Spine Surgeons do you know that make 2.5+ Million/Year that come out of Med School with an Ortho Background? Speaking from first hand knowledge, and knowing a number of spine guys, stateside, you gotta be kidding me if you think a practicing Spine Guy with an Orthopedic background's clearing 2.5 Million pretax. Your Ortho guy who does spine won't clear that. If they had a Neurosurgical background, then there's a possibility of it happening if they have a hell of a practice, are cutting 3 days a week, seeing patients 2 days a week, and have more than a steady stream of paid-in-full patients (either paid in cash, insurance that pays out no questions, or are guaranteed full payment on any surgeries done related to automobile accidents) but it's not a common thing.
Landrup,
They don't. You are presuming that every doctor makes significantly more because they are doctors. Not every doctor makes the same. Not every doctor is in a highly specialized field. I know doctors at all levels on the "Medical Pyramid", and you'd be surprised at how many of them are paid comparably to their European counterparts. Its only when you get into the highly specialized fields where you see doctors being paid more, which is commensurate with their skill.
To harp on Alex's point, socialized medicine has a much more rigid structure. As a result, non-emergent surgery is treated electively and is scheduled according to when time is available. Government controlled medicine dictates the price at which doctors are paid for their services.
WCR,
I think you're off on a number of points:
Doctors are not compensated for the risks of malpractice and medical insurance. Doctors fees are pretty much set in stone by Medical Billing Coding (CPT Coding). Assuming, of course, that everything is in order and they are not treating with respect to a lawsuit they were referred and that's another story, they won't get fully paid out on the CPT codes they bill for anyway. The CPT values are set by the insurance companies, and they rarely pay in full to begin with. Even on the assumption that they pay in full, medical malpractice premiums are still expensive, especially when you are dealing with much more specialized care.
mathteam, clearly you're a bit bitter here about something.
Wow.. I think you're jaded. Yes, everyone wants to make money, but you think they don't care about the individual? Assuming for a second that you are right, and they don't care about their patients and have no humanitarian qualities, whether they want to are not, it's their responsibility and requirement to care. If a doctor recommends surgery to his patients, its his responsibility for their care and well-being. It's his name on the line. It's his ass if something goes wrong, and he better damn care. If all they care about is money, just be a cutter and not worry about the outcome. I know enough docs that fit that build and have heard OR horror stories about these guys being associated with follow-up fixer uppers. But, then again, I've never met a doctor that lacks any desire to help people. They may be assholes and awful people, but they never lost the desire to help people.
As I already said, their fees are set for them. Blame the insurance on that one. Doctors are not responsible for the suffering associated with high prices of health care. Blame the insurance industry and our bloody litigious society for that one. You want to blame the medical field but they are just as much a set of victims in this problem as we are. Practicing defensive medicine as a protection from a possible lawsuit increases the costs of practicing. Why run an entire array of expensive tests unrelated to a problem when there is a very high possibility of them coming out negative? That's what they need to do to cover their own asses. What about the surgery that doesn't produce a perfect outcome thanks to a complication during surgery? Death on the OR Table? A patient lies about their treatment history or current drug usage? Those are all grounds for a malpractice suit, and you say that Doctors are responsible for the suffering? Jeez... if that's what you think, then you couldn't hack it as a surgeon.
What do you think is more challenging, something like a complex heart surgery or a large financial model for an merger / acquisition / restructuring ?
Although I love your attempt to troll Firefighter, it really depends on who you ask. That said, Heart Surgery. Hands down.
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