Submitted by NY MD, Dec 28, 2007 09:37

I am a surgeon. To all of you non-physicians I will tell you some "truths".

1) Internests make about 150K after expenses, but before taxes.

2) Surgeons make about 210K

3) ob/gyns make about 220K

If you think this is a lot of money, and that doctors are a bunch or "whiners", then stop here and save your valuable time. If you can appreciate that in NY this is not a lot of money compared to what a 30 year old makes on Wall Street, then you will understand the doctors pain. This 50K surcharge is really about providing food for the trial lawyers. That's it. They know that if the money in the insurance pool is gone, they can't make money. If you subtract 50k from a doctors income- why on Earth would anyone want this job? We can make more money as a Physicians Assistant with no liability issues, or even as a drug or device rep.

I'm glad we had a high level task force work on this issue with all interested parties. Wow, what a great conclusion all of these rocket scientists came up with- "hmmm, let's just charge the doctors MORE". I love it. The only mistake was not charging us more. Make it 200K and finally just put us out of our misery.

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