Your comments on this blog continually miss the mark. A DO has the same potential to make the same as an MD. I am a partner with a multispecialty clinic. There is no pay differential between MD and DO in any of the specialties.

But yes they were dumb choices

why would they live on the northside of chicago to go to loyola and christ?

U of I was only $9000/year while the DO College was $29000/year.

Another mistake was buying a dumpy condo in a poor market, when they would have been better off renting a small apartment on the Northside of Chicago.

He chose to make a point about debt forcing (encouraging?) people not to choose primary care by linking to a story where the person chose primary care? Ironical.

The situation with pediatrics is appalling – to spend that many years training & make less than most NPs & PAs. Anyone who defends that, or justifies it with “cardiology is competitive” is just an idiot.

And there are more cardiology fellowship spots than GI, pulmonary, rheumatology, heme/onc, and infectious disease spots COMBINED. So it’s not simple supply & demand, but rather it’s more about certain specialty groups lobbying medicare for procedural reimbursement, etc. This affects overall income for a given specialty, & eventually drives motivations for pursuing a specialty. That’s why competition goes in cycles, with a delay of a few years after some medicare changes.

For example, ophthalmology became intensely competitive about 15yrs ago, when medicare reimbursement for cataract surgery was big. Then there was GI, with reimbursement for colonoscopy/egd, and now it’s cardiology & orthopedics.

It’s all about money, always has been, and always will be (like most everything else).

That also changes their repayment parameters, because the mortgage likely has a higher interest rate than their student loans (which sound as if they mostly used sub and unsub Stafford loans, not many private lenders).

So: the number’s misleading.

But I attend a school with higher tuition than theirs, so I feel their pain. Reminds me to send some evil thoughts towards my state school, which saw fit to reject my attempt to avail myself of reasonably priced education.