Not everyone. My host family parents are both doctors (psychiatrist and anesthesiologist) in the US, and my girlfriend is currently in a residency program in Long Island, so I can tell from my limited observations.
My host family father (anesthesiologist) works from 7am to about 3pm (works for Einstein medical center in Philly). He pulls weekend extra time (on-call) to make ~$1000/call on Saturdays (to support his hobbies like expensive bikes and lens for photography). Gets paid well above $400K/year until he retired in 2015.
My host mom works as at a quasi-private psychiatry treatment center where she manages about 20 in-house patients (almost always the same patients who she has been treating for many years). She goes to work just like any other 8-5 job. Very relaxed atmosphere. Gets paid very well (to the tune of more than $320K/year until she retired in 2016).
My gf and her fellow residents at the hospital do not have a lot of stuff going on during most part of the days. She is a bit luckier than average resident in that regard though because her hospital is in a suburban setting. Her friends who got into residency programs like in Brooklyn, Bronx or Queens (e.g., Elmhurst hospital in Queens) have to work harder in their first and second years (especially only the first year). But not as bad as like 80 hrs/week like what you read in exaggerated news articles. Sure they work more than 40 hours because of on-calls and night duties. But definitely around 60 hrs/week (never approaching more than 70).
All this is to say that the work hours of US doctors and medical residents (doctors in training) that we see in the news, I suspect, are a bit exaggerated (of course, they have to be bad/outliers in order to be in the news).
I'd like to add that my host parents practiced in the UK for almost 7 years, and decided to move to the US (practiced here for almost two decades) because in the UK, they made like a quarter of what they were able to make in the US.
Last but not least, all of them (my host parents and my gf) studied medicine in Burma (a third world country) for 5 years only (+2 years of residency). Certainly, the education one can get at Myanmar government-funded medical Universities isn't top-notch or state-of-the-art, but most med students learned on their own by supplementing with private classes, self-learning and practice (e.g., shadowing doctors). They (international medical graduates) score very well (usually better than their US peers--see chart #6, #7 in [1]). The point I'm trying to make is that we do NOT need 4 years of undergraduate education for wanna-be doctors (pre-med students) because that is not necessary and adds more debt burden to future doctors. This artificial barrier to entry is adding to the inflated healthcare price by making it very difficult for anyone to become a doctor in the US. We don't need 8 years of college and medical school education for most specialties; in the end, the garden-variety illnesses can be diagnosed by reading up references like [2], and it doesn't take 8 years of training to do that.
P.S. This rant is partly contributed by my experience when I got an ear infection (acute otitis media) last week and saw a doctor in New York, who charged me $200 for looking into my ears with otoscope for 10 seconds, and wrote up a prescription (the entire encounter lasted no more than 5 minutes). Since my deductible is high ($3K/yr), I had to pay $133 out of pocket. The oral pills (amoxicillin-variant and an antihistamine) for three days costs $30 (which I paid). The worst part is seeing the $283 price quote for ear drop (CIPRODEX). When I decided to not buy that and asked my doc for a more generic version, that costs $35. I asked my mom to buy the same generic version of ear drop from Myanmar as she is visiting me this week. The ear drop costs $15 a piece there; doctor consultation $40; oral pills $7 (for two weeks supply just in case I get the ear infection again in the near future).
My host family father (anesthesiologist) works from 7am to about 3pm (works for Einstein medical center in Philly). He pulls weekend extra time (on-call) to make ~$1000/call on Saturdays (to support his hobbies like expensive bikes and lens for photography). Gets paid well above $400K/year until he retired in 2015.
My host mom works as at a quasi-private psychiatry treatment center where she manages about 20 in-house patients (almost always the same patients who she has been treating for many years). She goes to work just like any other 8-5 job. Very relaxed atmosphere. Gets paid very well (to the tune of more than $320K/year until she retired in 2016).
My gf and her fellow residents at the hospital do not have a lot of stuff going on during most part of the days. She is a bit luckier than average resident in that regard though because her hospital is in a suburban setting. Her friends who got into residency programs like in Brooklyn, Bronx or Queens (e.g., Elmhurst hospital in Queens) have to work harder in their first and second years (especially only the first year). But not as bad as like 80 hrs/week like what you read in exaggerated news articles. Sure they work more than 40 hours because of on-calls and night duties. But definitely around 60 hrs/week (never approaching more than 70).
All this is to say that the work hours of US doctors and medical residents (doctors in training) that we see in the news, I suspect, are a bit exaggerated (of course, they have to be bad/outliers in order to be in the news).
I'd like to add that my host parents practiced in the UK for almost 7 years, and decided to move to the US (practiced here for almost two decades) because in the UK, they made like a quarter of what they were able to make in the US.
Last but not least, all of them (my host parents and my gf) studied medicine in Burma (a third world country) for 5 years only (+2 years of residency). Certainly, the education one can get at Myanmar government-funded medical Universities isn't top-notch or state-of-the-art, but most med students learned on their own by supplementing with private classes, self-learning and practice (e.g., shadowing doctors). They (international medical graduates) score very well (usually better than their US peers--see chart #6, #7 in [1]). The point I'm trying to make is that we do NOT need 4 years of undergraduate education for wanna-be doctors (pre-med students) because that is not necessary and adds more debt burden to future doctors. This artificial barrier to entry is adding to the inflated healthcare price by making it very difficult for anyone to become a doctor in the US. We don't need 8 years of college and medical school education for most specialties; in the end, the garden-variety illnesses can be diagnosed by reading up references like [2], and it doesn't take 8 years of training to do that.
[1] http://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Charting-Outc... [2] https://www.uptodate.com/login
P.S. This rant is partly contributed by my experience when I got an ear infection (acute otitis media) last week and saw a doctor in New York, who charged me $200 for looking into my ears with otoscope for 10 seconds, and wrote up a prescription (the entire encounter lasted no more than 5 minutes). Since my deductible is high ($3K/yr), I had to pay $133 out of pocket. The oral pills (amoxicillin-variant and an antihistamine) for three days costs $30 (which I paid). The worst part is seeing the $283 price quote for ear drop (CIPRODEX). When I decided to not buy that and asked my doc for a more generic version, that costs $35. I asked my mom to buy the same generic version of ear drop from Myanmar as she is visiting me this week. The ear drop costs $15 a piece there; doctor consultation $40; oral pills $7 (for two weeks supply just in case I get the ear infection again in the near future).