If practicing is his love, then why doesn't he go back into private practice instead of retiring and take 'love of the job' as partial payment? It's not like he wouldn't be able to live very comfortably on the proceeds of his life's work to date, something that a great deal of other 'love of the job' workers couldn't do.
> It's not like he wouldn't be able to live very comfortably on the proceeds of his life's work to date
That's quite an assumption you're making there. Aside from the fact that most doctors are not wealthy beyond belief (contrary to popular opinion), the insurance structure has changed so much in recent years that many literally cannot work any longer.
Medicare reimbursements, for example, have been cut so much that doctors operate at a loss for certain procedures - for specialists, this may even cover the bulk of what you do, so the choice is whether to spend your savings to pay for your "hobby" or to retire.
"Aside from the fact that most doctors are not wealthy beyond belief (contrary to popular opinion)".
Certainly true.
Cardiologists, on the other hand?
Median salary: $362,000 (with 10th% at $247,000, 90th% at $502,000).
In terms of procedure costs, Medicare pays a hospital nearly $40 for an ECG (and if you're paying privately, you'll be paying a lot more) - for a procedure that takes an assistant an average of 60-90 seconds to apply 10 pads, acquire a 10-15 second graph of heart activity, and interpret (though any ECG machine in the last decade does rhythm analysis of its own accord). In the field, paramedics routinely run the ECG process in 3-5 minutes.
