According to an article in CNN, some doctors in the U.S. are going broke. Read it here . I feel sorry for anyone who goes broke, but this is not unexpected.
According to the author, some doctors have unsustainable debt and are facing reimbursement reductions by insurers. A good question is why the unsustainable debt? After all, many of our institutions have become bloated and can’t adapt to the economic downturn.
The article mentions a cardiologist who is going broke. According to a StudentDoc survey, the average cardiologist makes $403,000 per year. The average cardiovascular surgeon makes $558,719 per year. That’s not bad in either case.
My point is a lot of very highly paid people in every walk of life end up in bankruptcy. No matter how much you make, you can always spend more. I believe the health care industry has been as guilty of over-optimism as the real estate and finance sectors.
People have been saying for years that many clinics and hospitals will face a solvency crisis brought on by excessive borrowing to fund sleek new facilities and excessive purchases of uber-costly medical equipment. Some doctors became wealthy during the good years, and some of them made purchases not easily retracted now that the economy has turned down.
