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by Obama Pundit
Turns out the surtax on the rich proposed by the Democrats as a way to fund health care will have the perverse effect of affecting doctors the most.
The top eight highest-paid professions in the U.S. are–you guessed it–in the medical or dental fields.
Medical and dental specialists top the list of the highest paid professions, as they hold numbers one through eight of the 25 highest earning jobs as well as five other rankings on the 2004 list. Anesthesiologists are number one, internists number two and obstetricians and gynecologists number three of the top professional earners in the United States. Oral surgeons take the fourth spot, orthodontists the fifth and prosthodontists the sixth. Psychiatrists are listed as the seventh of the highest paid professions, while surgeons are ranked as the eighth. The average 2004 income for these eight professions is more than $145,600 US dollars (USD).
Mind you, these are average salaries–the average anethesiologist makes $314,000 per year, for instance. So a healthy portion of the medical field will be affected by the proposed surtax on wealthy individuals.
This type of punishment will serve as a disincentive for some who would otherwise enter the medical field. The result will be fewer doctors and, thus, more expensive health care.
Of course, it could also happen that future generations of doctors will work for the government as civil servants and will not be paid as much as they are now. In which case, where will the money to fund health care come from?
