smackaholic wrote:What do you 'spose a run of the mill doctor visit ought to really cost? You know, just walk into an office, have a seat and say "high doc, it hurts when I do this". No filling out paperwork ahead of time, no being weighed/measured/prodded by some fukking medical assistant. Just you, talking to the doc for maybe 10 minutes.
I'm guessing that a doc without an army of paper pushers on staff would be satisfied making $100/hr gross. So, he could see you for 10 minutes and charge you 20 bucks.
What kind of doctor are we talking about? The guy who's past 70, already collecting social security and receiving a payout from his IRA's, who's semi-retired and continues to practice because he's scared that retirement would literally bore him to death? Yeah, he might be satisfied at $100/hr gross. Anyone else, though, and I'm afraid you're off by half. At least.
Let's do some math here. $100/hr x 2,000 billable hours/yr (a generous estimate, btw) = $200,000/yr gross.
Now, I'm not a doctor. But I am a self-employed professional. And I'm well aware that it costs money to do that. Lessee here, just off the top of my head, a doctor has the following expenses:
Office rent/mortgage payment
Office equipment
Office supplies
Utilities for office (if you rent and you're lucky, the landlord might pay these)
Payroll (if >1 full-time employee, this expense will get huge against $200,000/yr gross)
Licensing fees (lawyers have these where I live, I assume doctors have 'em too)
Continuing education (again, lawyers have mandatory continuing education requirements where I live, I'd hope that doctors have them too)
Malpractice insurance (even in the good ol' days, I suspect doctors had to carry this)
Granted, you could share a practice, or at least office space, with other doctors. If you do that, you might cut expenses in the first 4-5 categories, but you'll still have some expenses in those categories in any event.
And I haven't even started on living expenses. On top of your ordinary expenses, medical school, like law school, is expensive. So I'll bet that the typical doctor, at least for part of his career, has a student loan or two (or maybe more) to repay.
I live in an area which has a relatively low cost of living overall, and even here, it's not uncommon to see lawyers charge $200/hr or more, except on certain matters. As a general rule, doctors, at least around here, tend to make more than lawyers. And since there's fewer doctors relative to the need for doctors than there are lawyers relative to the need for lawyers, you don't have the same market forces exerting downward pressure on their income.
I suspect that the typical doctor would bill you at roughly $300/hr. Certainly, insurance pays more for a doctor's visit, in most cases, than this -- even before you factor in your copay.
