The Cost of Government Health Care - For Doctors

I was looking around the internet one day and came across an interesting website. It's called Payscale.Com. You can type in most careers and after a few questions it will tell you some salary expectations. I decided to plug in some figures connected with doctors. Here's what I found out:

- A Neurosurgeon in the United States with 1-4 years experience makes between $117,916 - $412,643. A Family Physician in the United States with 1-4 years experience makes between $107,753 - $146,397.

- A Neurosurgeon in Canada with 1-4 years experience makes between $46-159 - $194,387 in USD. A Family Physician in Canada with 1-4 years experience makes between 70,000-128,916 Canadian dollars, which in dollars equals between $64,623 - $119,014.

-A Neurosurgeon in the United Kingdom with 1-4 years experience makes between $77,889 - $136,000 USD. A Family Physician in the United Kingdom with 1-4 years experience makes between 24,303 - 44,764 pounds a year, which in dollars equals between $39,324 - $74,432.

What's is going on with the salaries in the UK? $40K-$70K for a family physician? Well, since we are modeling our healthcare on the NHS, let's assume that the pay is going to be the same. So, a family physician with 1-4 years experience could make $40,000 a year. Now, here are some jobs in the US that currently make around $40,000: Social workers, graphic designers, bailiffs, dietitians. Now don't get me wrong, these are very important jobs themselves. But when college students go to medical school, they aren't thinking about spending an additional 4 years to make $40,000. Just the tuition alone can cost $25,000 a year. They not only (most of the time) care about saving lives and bettering our way of life, but they pretty much expect to be well compensated for their work, and well, $40,000 just isn't going to cut it for a lot of Americans who have ambitions to be family physicians.