My dad practiced oredpothics for 20 years. He had a PhD in ortho from U of Iowa, and served as a Navy surgeon in Viet Nam. He specialized in artificial knees and hips. He and a couple colleagues invented the orthoscope, a gadget that radically improved the quality of care for his sports medicine patients and reduced surgical/hospital costs.Dad worked 80 hours a week on average, including three weekends a month on call. Few breaks for holidays. We rarely saw him during the week. Divide $250k a year (just guessing - he wasn't one to talk about money) into 4,000 hours a year and you get about 60 bucks an hour. Out of that salary:- 25% or more went to taxes- $70-80k a year for malpractice insurance to protect his family and practice from all the worthless patient lawsuits by crooked lawyers- Salary for his administrative staff to process and follow up on reams of insurance and government paperwork. - Costs of OSHA and other compliance overhead to run his clinic and x-ray machine.I'm not saying we didn't live comfortably. He took good care of us. Rather than credit his salary, I'd say God blessed him for all the pro-bono work he did for patients that couldn't afford care but still took up his time. And trips to Africa on his own dime for medical missions. I heard once that our church was waiting on my dad for his tithe plan so it could figure out its annual budget.I don't know if these MD's in other countries are as overlawyered and overregulated as US doctors are. Could be the reason why ours seem more expensive. Final shot: Dad's a humble guy. Often jokes that oredpothics was basically carpentry, and that he would have made more money and had less liability as a carpenter. But he couldn't get into the union.

You get a lot of rescpet from me for writing these helpful articles.

Tom,Horrible arguments that you are mnkaig doing analysis in a vacuum.They remind me of this quote from Thomas Watson of IBM back in 1943..."I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."Tom: Who decides how much medical school costs or should cost? Who decides that it should take all that time to become a doctor after getting a Bachelor's degree? Who makes those decisions? Who sets the opportunity cost?I get absolutely p**sed off with medical professionals who claim to know what is in the best interest of the US healthcare system, when they have a vested interest in protecting the status quo. Ridiculous. Healthcare is the only thing in the world where they don't appear to give a care in the world about the quality of my service, competing on price, or anything else in the world that just about every other working person has to deal with everyday to put food on the table.In my business, no one cares how many years of schooling or asks if the my opportunity costs were "fair." They care about my performance and how much my services cost. And they can measure it objectively. If they don't like it, they fire me.None of these real world rules apply to anyone in the medical profession.

Deep thinikng - adds a new dimension to it all.

A piece of erudition unilke any other!