Doctors Are Not Overpaid: Column

Some people think I'm overpaid as a physician, and that my salary fuels rising health costs. I can see their point: A survey by the Medical Group Management Association released in May found that internal medicine doctors like me have a starting median compensation of $190,000, while specialists such as anesthesiologists approach $300,000.

Vox's Sarah Kliff reports that U.S. physician salaries were twice as much as those in countries such as France and concluded, "Doctor salaries are a pretty significant part of the reason why the United States spends more per person on health care than any other developed country."  Not surprisingly, many doctors disagree. A 2014 Medscape poll found only half of physicians felt they were fairly compensated.

Context is needed when analyzing doctors' earnings. Rather than compare compensation figures among the U.S. and countries with dissimilar societies and economies, it's more useful to compare physicians' compensation relative to others in the top 5% of the income bracket. The talent pool that supplies doctors also likely produces other high earners: business executives and lawyers, for instance. Harvard economist David Cutler did this comparison and found that U.S. physicians were less well-paid than non-U.S. doctors relative to their high-earning peers...