On Doctors and the Military

Commenter Wombat Socho says that the military is an extraordinarily inapt example to use in defense of the possibilities for lower doctor pay:

Ever since I was a wee Air Force brat, doctors as a class were the hardest officers to retain since they could usually make a lot more money in the civilian world. This has also been true historically, to the extent that the armed forces have their own med school and have resorted to drafting doctors in wartime. I guess the uniforms and "social status" didn't work for those doctors...particularly because the military is still looked down on by the literary elites, and doctors are also at the bottom of the military social scale, which basically boils down to combat arms officers first, support officers next, and civilian professionals in uniform last.