Well if you have your own practice (Rent, paying your own malpractice, employee salary) it’s a bit different. You can cut that in half with expenses of running a practice.
Working under a corporation that buys you out, you are just a salaried employee. They pay your malpractice which for GYN’s as an example can be close to in the hundred thousands. Sometimes making 200K as a salary is better than 300-400 on your own. My GYN sold his practice in 1998 bc his malpractice was up to 150K at the time.
Most new grads do not open their own practice for the reason you state. The accused did not. Nobody I know ever did. Most want to make some money first.
After years of making, $50,000 or $60,000 as a resident or fellow…you can go to a large corp or doc-owned practice and make $300,000, $400,00 or much more…and THEY pay for insurance, sometimes tail insurance, 401k…etc.
Why take on all those burdens like rent, employees, etc.
In the smaller practices you can get the big starting salary. goon a track to partner, often making WAY more in a few years. You become a part owner.
Or the corporations, where yes, you are an employee …but you are not having to pay malpractice etc. Some pay student loans as well as all the other perks.
But you must rigorously keep up in yr field, or like any business these days, they will no longer find you valuable. Especially in medicine, where lives are on the line. Physicians continually have to be recertified as well throughout their careers.
In any event, for our purposes, the accused is in a very lucrative field. We just don’t know if he has encountered professional difficulties.