Academic Physician Salaries: Are They Anyone's Business?

Are academic physician salaries anyone's business?  With three of the top four salaries at public academic institutions doctors (#1 is of course a football coach), Bob Doherty at the ACP Advocate asks the question,

Is it anybody's business what physicians at academic institutions are paid?

Let's put it this way.   You can be the most uneducated blob in the world, but if you happen to own the mineral rights to the land your pappy bought 100 years ago, and that land happens to house the largest pile of gold ever seen, you will be one financially rich dude.

If you invent something that everyone wants and nobody else can make, you will be one financially rich dude.  If you have skills that everyone wants and nobody else can offer, you will be one financially rich dude.  How much someone makes financially is entirely dependent on the ability of that person to offer a product or a service that others want.  How much others are willing to pay for that service is determined by the market  And that is why it is none of any one's business how much their neighbor makes.

Will these folks continue to command the salaries they are in the current business climate?  Some may.  But keep in mind, just as the unfunded Medicare crises is going to be the mother of all blow ups, so will the higher education bubble.  Every year for as far as the eye can see, the tuition costs of higher education have outpaced the rest of the inflationary pressures of this country.

At some point, like all bubbles, the higher education bubble will burst.  When the tuition is priced out of the market, like it is in so many places, people will simply stop paying.  And there will be no one left to pay the salaries of these high flying doctor executives.

• Think out of control tuition out pacing inflation year after year-->less money for education
• Think plans to raise taxes on income-->less money for education
• Think Obama's plans to reduce tax deductions on charitable contributions-->less money into University foundations-->less money for salaries
• Think the asset collapse of the century-->shrinking foundation funds

If you are going to pay your academic docs big bucks, they will have to prove their value.  And that answer can only be answered by each institution on their own merits.