Category: Physician Finances

The U.S. stock market and U.S. bond market are both down 18% since December 2021. Neither are showing any signs of recovery. On the other hand, money market accounts are doing quite well with rising annual yields. This has caused many people to invest new money into money market accounts. An advantage of these accounts is that they are covered by FDIC insurance, giving investors a sense that their money is secure. But investors need to research their money markets carefully because not all of them are actually insured by the FDIC.

What is a money market account?

A central tenet of any financial plan is to have an emergency fund that can cover at least 3 and preferably 6 months of household expenses. This emergency fund should be held in “cash”. From an investment standpoint, cash means an account that is secure, non-volatile, and immediately available. The three types of accounts that are considered as cash accounts are (1) checking, (2) savings, and (3) money markets. These are often called “transactional accounts“. Although some financial experts also consider certificates of deposit to be cash accounts, they are better considered to be low-risk investments because the money deposited in them cannot be accessed for a set number of months. Because of this, money in certificates of deposit cannot be used in an emergency. The Federal Reserve reported that as of 2019, the median amount of money Americans held in transactional accounts was $5,300 however the mean amount was much higher, $41,600. This discrepancy is due to a small number of Americans holding a very large amount of money in transactional accounts, resulting in the average being skewed.

Most financial experts recommend maintaining 1-2 months’ worth of expenses in a checking account and 2-4 months’ of expenses in savings or money market accounts. Money market accounts and savings accounts are very similar but there are several important differences. Money market accounts often come with check-writing and debit card options, unlike savings accounts. Money market accounts generally pay higher interest rates than savings accounts to depositors. However, money market accounts usually require a much larger initial deposit than savings accounts with the interest rate varying depending on the amount deposited and held in the money market account.

Checking accounts generally earn little to no interest; indeed, many banks charge a monthly fee to checking account owners. Savings accounts do earn interest but it is minuscule – currently, savings accounts at large national banks typically only earn 0.01% annual interest. For the past several years, money market accounts also had very low interest rates that were about the same as savings accounts but in the past 6 months, these interest rates have risen to 3 – 4% annualized.

When a person deposits money in a money market account, the bank then uses that money to invest, typically in short-term bonds and treasury bills. The bank makes its money off of the interest on those investments by making the interest it pays the depositor slightly lower than the interest rate on the bank’s investments. As an example, at last week’s auction by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the annualized interest on treasury bills ranged from 4.22% on 4-week bills to 4.70% on 26-week bills. Last week, my bank was offering money market accounts with a 3.50% annualized yield. So, if the bank uses money market deposits to buy treasury bills, it can make a net profit of about 1%. Banks can also use money deposited into money market accounts to make bank loans, such as mortgages, car loans, and business loans. The interest the bank charges on these loans is even higher than treasury bill interest rates. Banks assume that there is a predictable amount of money being deposited and withdrawn by money market account owners and assumes that everyone does not decide to withdraw all of the money market funds all at once.

What does being FDIC-insured mean?

An advantage of transactional bank accounts is that they are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). The FDIC is a United States government corporation created in 1933 in response to runs on banks that contributed to the Great Depression. Banks that are members of the FDIC pay the FDIC annual fees that are similar to insurance premiums. The FDIC then uses the proceeds of these fees to build up its reserves in order to insure the checking accounts, savings accounts, money market accounts, and certificates of deposit at member banks. Importantly, the FDIC is self-funded, meaning that it is not supported by public funds and does not depend on congressional appropriations.

Each transactional account at member banks is insured for up to $250,000. That means that if you have a checking account, savings account, and money market account at an FDIC member bank, each of them is insured for $250,000 for a total of up to $750,000 if you put $250,000 into each of these three accounts. Any amount over $250,000 deposited in an account is not insured and can be lost if the bank goes under. The FDIC’s reserves are currently $1.28 billion. In the event of massive bank failures, the FDIC also has a line of credit of an additional $100 billion from the U.S. Treasury Department. Because of this, FDIC-insured transactional accounts are considered the safest of all types of investments.

Money market funds are not FDIC-insured

Money market accounts are issued by banks. Money market funds are issued by investment companies. Although these two types of money markets are similar, there are important differences, the most important being that money market funds are mutual funds and are not insured by the FDIC. However, that does not necessarily mean that FDIC-uninsured money market funds are less safe than FDIC-insured money market accounts. As is often the case, the details are in the fine print.

When you deposit money in a bank’s money market account, the bank leverages that money to make loans and investments. The bank does not just keep that money in a vault somewhere. This creates a problem if there is a run on the bank by depositors because the bank does not have enough cash on hand to pay off all of the depositors at once. If this happens, the bank can become insolvent and go under, such as happened with Silicon Valley Bank recently. Unlike banks, investment companies do not make loans so all of the deposits in a money market fund are used for investments, typically in short-term U.S. government bonds and treasury bills. As an example, the Vanguard Cash Reserves Federal Money Market Fund has 99.5% of its funds held in cash or U.S. government securities (U.S. government bonds, treasury bills, and U.S. government securities repurchase agreements). The yield that a money market funds pays to its investors is directly related to the interest that the fund is getting from the government securities it buys. This week, Vanguard’s money market fund has an annualized yield of 4.55%. This is higher than the annualized yield of bank money market accounts but slightly lower than the current interest on 26-week treasury bills. Other money market funds offered by investment companies may be invested in municipal bonds, making the yield tax-exempt to depositors. High-risk money market funds may invest in corporate bonds or foreign currency certificates of deposit.

Money market funds also differ from money market accounts by check-writing and debit card privileges. These are not typically offered by investment companies to money market fund depositors. It also takes longer to withdraw money from a money market fund than a money market account. Generally, it takes 2-3 days (and up to 7 days) for money to transfer from a money market fund in an investment company into a checking account at your bank. However, most money market accounts held by your bank can transfer funds immediately into a checking account held in that bank.

When you invest money in an investment company’s money market fund, you are purchasing shares of that fund. The fund managers generally keep the price per share at $1.00. When the fund makes money, it pays you in dividends (not interest). So, when you make income off of the money invested in the money market fund, the price per share does not change but you end up with dividends. Usually, those dividends get reinvested in the money market fund resulting in you owning more shares of that money market fund. During the 2008 financial crises, the price per share of most money market funds dropped to $0.97, so investors lost 3% on their money market fund investments.

When depositing money in a bank’s money market, it is important to read the details carefully to be sure that the bank is offering an FDIC-insured money market account. As an example, Chase Bank does not offer a money market account through its regular banking services but it does offer a money market fund through its affiliated investment company, JP Morgan Asset Management. The current annualized yield on this money market fund is 4.47% but it is not FDIC-insured.

Caveat emptor

Nowhere does the phrase “Let the buyer beware” apply more importantly than investing. In this time of financial uncertainty with bank failures and the impending U.S. debt ceiling, it is essential that all investors be sure of the details of their investments. Money markets are currently highly attractive because they are generally safe and currently paying annualized yields that are better than can be had with stocks or bonds. Here are some of the considerations to take into account when considering a money market:

1. Is your bank a member of the FDIC? If it is, then money market accounts offered by the bank are likely FDIC-insured. There are a few banks in the United States that are not insured by the FDIC so be sure that yours is an FDIC member bank. Credit unions are not insured by the FDIC but are insured by the equivalent National Credit Union Administration (NCUA).
2. Is the money market offered by your bank insured by the FDIC? If your bank is an FDIC member and offers a money market account directly, then the money market is insured. But you do need to be careful because many banks will link their websites to their sister investment companies, often called “asset management” or “wealth management” companies with a similar name as the bank’s. These money market funds are generally not FDIC-insured.
3. How much money are you putting in a money market? In general, you should avoid putting more than $250,000 in any single money market account. A common scenario is buying a new house. Let’s say you sell your current house for $500,000 and you are buying a new house for $500,000 but the closing date for purchase of your new house is two months after the closing date for sale of your old house. So you need to park $500,000 somewhere safe until you close on your new house. It is better to split the money into two $250,000 money markets – either into one owned by you and one owned by your spouse at a single bank or into two money market accounts in two different banks.
4. Money market account versus money market fund. The deposits in an FDIC-insured money market account will be slightly safer than deposits in a non-insured money market fund. However the money market fund will probably pay a higher annualized yield than the money market account. You will need to weigh the risk versus reward associated with an account versus a fund.
5. What is the money market fund invested in? If you do decide to deposit money into a money market fund, be sure that you read the details of how the fund manager uses those deposits. A money market fund that is totally invested in U.S. government securities is safer than a money market fund invested in municipal bonds. A money market fund that is invested in corporate bonds or foreign currency certificates of deposit is considerably riskier.
6. How fast will you need to move the money? You can wire money from your bank’s money market account immediately but it can take up to a week to transfer money from your investment company’s money market fund into your checking account.
7. Do you want to write checks on your money market? Although every bank and investment company has different rules, most banks will allow you to write a check or use a debit card to access cash in your money market account. Most investment companies do not offer check-writing or debit cards to withdraw cash from money market funds.
8. Know your tax implications. Money market accounts will pay you interest, which is taxed at your regular income tax rate. Money market funds will pay you dividends, instead of interest. Dividends come in two types: ordinary dividends and qualified dividends. Qualified dividends are taxed at the dividend tax rate of either 0%, 15%, or 20%, depending on your taxable income. For most people, the dividend tax rate is lower than their regular income tax rate. Ordinary dividends, on the other hand, are taxed at your regular income tax rate, just like interest is taxed. Most money market funds will pay out ordinary dividends and not qualified dividends. Money market funds invested in municipal bonds are generally tax-exempt.
9. When to consider treasury bills instead of a money market. Every week, the U.S. Treasury Department auctions federal securities. Treasury bonds mature in 20-30 years, treasury notes mature in 2-10 years, and treasury bills mature in less than 1 year. For some people, purchasing a treasury bill directly from the Treasury Department can be a good alternative to a money market. Treasury bills are similar to a certificate of deposit in that the money cannot be accessed until the bill matures. The advantage of a treasury bill is that it generally pays a higher rate of return than money market accounts at a bank. Just be aware that if the federal government reaches the debt ceiling without congressional action, you may not be able to get paid once a treasury bill reaches its mature date. Currently, treasury bills with mature dates of 4, 8, 13, 17, and 26-weeks are available for purchase. The most recent annualized rates range from 4.22% for 4-week bills to 4.70% for 26-week bills.

The good news is that both money market accounts and money market funds are generally safe and currently offering better annualized yields than other common investments. Just be sure you know what you are putting your money into before you hand over your cash.

Recently, the Federal Trade Commission has proposed a rule that would ban all non-compete clauses in employment contracts. These clauses have been common for physicians, so what would the impact be?

A non-compete clause is a type of restrictive covenant that prevents an employee from working for one of their employer’s competitors. Non-compete clauses typically specify a duration of time that the former employee cannot work for a competitor (typically 1 year) and the geographic range that the former employee is prohibited from working in. A related clause is the “non-solicitation clause” which prohibits employees from taking customers (patients) with them if they leave their job. Non-solicitation clauses can also be written to prohibit a former employee from recruiting other current employees to come work for them.

Although results of different surveys of physicians vary, the best estimate is that approximately 40% of U.S. physicians are bound by a non-compete clause. A frequently raised question is: “but is it enforceable?”. The answer is… maybe. In the United States, each state has its own laws regarding non-compete clauses with several states (such as Oklahoma, North Dakota, and California) banning them altogether. The enforceability of non-compete clauses is also state-specific and usually based on legal precedents from previous judicial decisions in that particular state. In general, physicians do not want to have non-compete clauses in their contracts but employers (hospitals or group practices) do want to have non-compete clauses.

I have been on both sides of the physician non-compete clause controversy – as a physician who had to sign my own employment contract and as an employer who had to help write physician contracts. As a practicing physician, I had two components of my clinical practice: as an inpatient critical care physician working in our hospital intensive care unit and as an outpatient pulmonologist who was one of the very few in Central Ohio specializing in interstitial lung disease. These two components of my practice had very different implications for non-compete clauses. As an employer, I had roles as the treasurer of our clinical department, an elected board member of our health system’s physician practice group, and the medical director of one of the hospitals in our health system. Each of these employer-related roles gave me a different vantage point on physician non-compete clauses. After dealing with the pros and cons of these clauses for more than 30 years, here are some of my thoughts.

When are physician non-compete clauses NOT appropriate?

Fundamentally, non-compete clauses are used to prevent harm to the employer. For some physicians, leaving one hospital to go work for another hospital in the same city poses little to no risk of harm to their employer. This is primarily true for specialties that do not depend on physician referrals, particularly if there is no significant physician shortage in that particular speciality. For these specialties, non-compete clauses should either be non-existent or should be less restrictive. Typically, these physicians are hospital-based and the patients that they care for are not referred specifically to them by some other physician. Instead, they get patients who choose to come to that particular hospital but do not choose to see that specific doctor. Many of these physicians do shift work. Examples include:

• Hospitalists
• Critical care physicians
• Emergency medicine physicians
• Radiologists
• Pathologists
• Anesthesiologists

If one of these physicians leaves to go work for the hospital’s competitor, they do not take patients with them. The hospital may have financial harm from having to recruit another physician in the same specialty to take their place but the hospital is unlikely to lose patients who would chose to go to a different hospital simply because that physician now practices there. The hospital can also be financially harmed if its most experienced and most productive physicians leave since that hospital will likely have to replace those physicians with younger, less experienced and less productive physicians. However, this would be equally the case whether the senior physician leaves to work in a hospital across the street or leaves to work in a hospital in a different part of the country, outside of the hospital’s geographic area of patient referrals.

Much of the criticism of physician non-compete clauses have come from primary care physicians and it is not really clear whether primary care physicians ever need a non-compete clause. There have been emotional stories of family physicians who wanted to leave their hospital-owned practice to work in public health clinics caring for uninsured patients but were contractually prohibited by the hospital. However, the reality is that most primary care physicians leave for another practice because of better working conditions or better pay. As long as a primary care physician does not take their patient panel with them, there is little effect on a hospital because it is relatively easy for that hospital to hire a new primary care physician to assume care for that patient panel. In this case, a non-solicitation clause that prohibits the primary care physician from actively taking their patient panel with them would be more appropriate. These non-solicitation agreements generally do not prohibit a patient from voluntarily seeking out that primary care physician at their new practice location but do prohibit the physician from actively trying to persuade (solicit) that patient to follow the physician to their new practice.

When ARE physician non-compete clauses appropriate?

Two situations when non-compete clauses do make sense for physicians are when the hospital has invested money in a physician’s training or invested money in a physician’s practice ramp-up period. In both of these situations, the hospital can experience direct financial harm if a physician leaves to go work for a competitor.

One example of employers investing money in physician training is military medicine. Medical students agree to work for the military for a specified number of years and in exchange, the military agrees to pay for all or some of the medical student’s educational expenses. Another example is when a hospital pays for a physician to get advanced training in order to fill a clinical or administrative need at that hospital. For example, a hospital that sends one of its physicians to get training in quality assurance to prepare the physician for a hospital quality directorship. Or when the hospital decides to buy a surgical robot and sends one of its surgeons to get trained to use the robot. In these situations, the hospital has a direct financial investment in that physician’s training and the hospital should expect to receive a return on that investment.

In many specialties, physician contracts will include a practice ramp-up, whereby the hospital will subsidize that physician’s income for a specific number of years while that physician builds their practice and develops a referral base. The duration of time for this ramp-up depends on the specific specialty. For example, it may only take a new gastroenterologist 1 year to build up a sustainably-sized patient panel. On the other hand, it may take 5 years for a plastic surgeon specializing in aesthetic surgery to build a sustainable referral base. A typical ramp-up contract would be for a relatively large subsidy for the first year of practice and then smaller amounts for subsequent years. For hospital-employed, salaried physicians, the ramp up is often expressed as annual RVU targets. For example, a hospital-employed gastroenterologist might be contractually expected to generate 6,000 wRVUs the first year and then 8,000 wRVUs in subsequent years. During that first year, the gastroenterologist’s salary is guaranteed and not dependent on RVU production. For non-hospital-employed physicians, the ramp up is often in direct monetary payments. For example, the hospital might pay the plastic surgeon $200,000 year 1, $150,000 year 2, $100,000 year 3, and $50,000 year 4. In either case, the hospital has a direct financial investment in developing the physician’s practice and once again, the hospital should expect a reasonable return on that investment.

If physicians take patients with them to a new hospital, the original hospital will lose money. Those patient now go to a different hospital for their lab tests, their x-rays, and their surgeries. This “down-stream revenue” can be substantial – not only as a loss of income to the hospital but also as a loss of patient care income to the pathologists, radiologists, surgeons, and specialists who practice at that hospital and are dependent on that patient population remaining at their hospital. This can occur with primary care physicians who have a large patient panel. But it can also occur with outpatient specialists who maintain large populations of patients who regularly see them in the office. As with primary care physicians, a non-solicitation clause may be more appropriate for these specialists than a non-competition clause.

Specialists can also create financial harm to a hospital by leaving and taking their referrals with them. Specialists cultivate referral bases over years of practice. So, for example, if a joint replacement surgeon who has established a referral network of rheumatologists and primary care physicians leaves to go work for another hospitals, those rheumatologists and primary care physicians will now be sending their patients needing joint replacement surgeries to a different hospital. As an alternative to non-compete clauses, non-solicitation clauses can be written to prohibit specialists from actively seeking referrals from their previous referral base. When a physician in our practice group resigned, announcement letters to that physician’s patients had to be written by or approved by the practice administrators so that the physician could not advertise to patients about their new practice location.

So, what is the solution?

Physician non-compete clauses should not be a “one size fits all” proposition. Most physicians do not need a non-compete clause as there are more effective ways to ensure their loyalty. For those physicians who do need non-compete clauses, the details of those clauses should be tailored to the degree of financial loss faced by the hospital (or employing group practice) should they leave.

For specialties that do not warrant non-complete clauses, paying end-of-the year bonuses is a good way to ensure that the physicians remain with the hospital for at least one year. It costs money to recruit and hire physicians when considering the cost of job advertising, interviewing, travel, moving expenses, signing bonuses, and on-boarding. But an unhappy physician is not going to be a productive physician and moreover, that unhappy physician can poison the culture of the hospital’s medical staff – in the long run, a poisoned culture can be very expensive. Ensuring that physicians remain employed for at least one year of employment in order to get their bonus gives the hospital enough time to recruit another physician to replace the one who is leaving. If the physician leaves before 1 year is up, the hospital can use the money it would have paid that physician in bonus pay for new physician recruitment, instead.

For specialties that do warrant non-compete clauses, sometimes other restrictive covenants can be equally effective or even more effective. For example, a non-solicitation clause in a primary care physician’s contract can prohibit that physician from taking their panel of patients with them to a new employer. This can mean prohibiting the physician from taking patient medical records with them and contacting patients to offer to see them at the physician’s new office. Non-solicitation clauses can also be used to prohibit the physician from recruiting other physicians or hospital employees to come work at their new place of employment.

When hospitals agree to provide a financial ramp-up as a physician builds their practice, it is reasonable for that hospital to insert a non-compete clause. Before our health system put non-compete clauses in our physician employment contracts, we would regularly have surgeons and specialists who would receive ramp-up subsidies totaling as much as $400,000 over several years. All too often, as soon as the surgeon or specialist completed their ramp-up period, they would be recruited by another hospital in town that would pay them a $50,000 signing bonus. This was a bargain for the other hospital since it only had to pay a small signing bonus and did not have to pay the more expensive ramp-up, thus saving that hospital a net $350,000. However, hospital want to have to keep an unhappy surgeon or specialist on the medical staff. So, a solution is to have a buyout for the non-competition clause to offset the hospital’s initial investment in that surgeon or specialist. This buyout should be equal to the amount that the hospital has subsidized that physician with a diminishing amount after the ramp-up period commiserate with the hospital’s subsequent return on investment from the physician’s contribution to the hospital’s patient care revenue. For example, let’s take a surgeon specializing in surgery of the right little toe who needs 3 years to build his toe surgery referral base and get his OR team efficient with toe surgeries. His buyout might look like this:

Ramp-up periods are used not just to build referrals but also to build expertise. In my experience, it takes about 7 years for a newly trained surgery resident or fellow to reach maximum surgical efficiency as an attending physician. In those 7 years, the surgeon is building their operative team and learning how to hone his or her skill: Which patients to operate on and which to not operate on. How to reduce the operative time it initially takes to perform a particular surgical procedure. How to anticipate and avoid surgical complications. For non-surgical specialists, the time to reach maximum productivity may be a bit shorter. But regardless, in the first several years after completion of formal training, the physician is still learning and the hospital generally is covering part of the cost of that on-the-job training. Even if the heart surgeon is paid based on wRVU productivity and thus gets paid less in their first few years after fellowship, the hospital loses money from paying the OR nurses and anesthesiologist to do 2 open heart surgeries in a day rather than 3 open heart surgeries in the same amount of time while the surgeon is learning how to be efficient.

Hospitals should be willing to waive buyouts and non-competes under certain circumstances. For example, a few years ago, we had a non-productive but somewhat famous specialist at our hospital who we were losing money on and we considered terminating him. A hospital 5 miles away was simultaneously recruiting him, believing that they were making a hiring coup by poaching a famous doctor from us, not realizing that he was a financial disaster. We waived his non-compete and did not ask for a buyout because we were happy to have him gone (and now dragging down the competition’s finances). Similarly, academic physicians who have worked at a university medical center for several years and then get passed up for academic promotion should have any non-competes waived.

Non-compete geographic limits

Most physician non-compete clauses contain geographic restrictions that correspond with the hospital’s patient population geography. For example, a community hospital might have a 10-mile restriction if most of its patients live within that 10-mile radius. On the other hand, a tertiary referral hospital might have a 50-mile radius non-compete restriction if it depends on referrals from a lot of community hospitals within that 50-mile radius.

Geographic limits should also be based on the specialty. For example, a primary care physician probably will not draw patients from further than 10 miles from their current practice whereas a specialist might draw patients from 100 miles away. This can be particularly true for a physician specializing in a very unique condition such as a kidney transplant surgeon or an interstitial lung disease pulmonologist (such as myself), who may be the only physician practicing in that specialty in a several county area.

What is considered a reasonable geographic distance in non-compete clauses is often contentious and the cause of many employment-related lawsuits. A non-compete clause for the kidney transplant surgeon specifying metropolitan Columbus might be reasonable but specifying all of Ohio is probably unreasonable.

Hospitals will not voluntarily eliminate physician non-compete clauses

No hospital wants to be the only hospital in town to eliminate non-compete clauses. Otherwise, there would be unidirectional movement of physicians from that hospital to all of the other hospitals in town that do have non-compete clauses. So, for those hospitals that would be willing to drop their non-compete clauses from physician employment contracts, if the FTC makes non-compete clauses illegal, then they could finally eliminate non-competes without worrying about being at a competitive disadvantage to their hospital competitors. In other words, the FTC ruling would essentially level the playing field.

Academic hospitals and non-academic hospitals will be affected differently. Historically, many physicians have left jobs in academic medicine to go into private practice at non-academic hospitals. But the reverse is very rare: physicians generally do not give up their private practice to go into academic medicine. There are always exceptions – our health system acquired a local private practice electrophysiology cardiology group and a local vascular surgery group, for example. But by and large, physician movement between academics and private practice is a one-way street. If physician non-compete clauses are outlawed, then academic hospitals will be at risk of losing more physicians to local non-academic hospitals but the reverse is unlikely to occur. On the other hand, physician movement between different non-academic hospitals is very common. Individual physicians leave one group practice to join another group practice. Hospitals contract with one hospitalist group one year and a different group the next year. Elimination of non-compete clauses will likely affect physician movement between different non-academic hospitals fairly similarly. As a consequence, no academic hospital ever wants to give up its physician non-compete clauses but non-academic hospitals will be willing to give up non-competes as long as all of the other non-academic hospitals in town have to also give up theirs.

Because of this one-way movement of physicians from academic to non-academic hospitals, these two types of hospitals will have ramp-up costs affected differently by global elimination of non-compete clauses. Academic hospitals who lose physicians to non-academic hospitals immediately after their ramp-up costs are paid will stand to lose those ramp up costs. However, if a non-academic hospital pays ramp-up costs for a physician who is then poached by another non-academic hospital, then the original hospital can poach a different doctor from the second hospital so that the ramp-up costs end up balancing out. Because of this, academic hospitals will likely lose more money in ramp-up expenses than non-academic hospitals if non-compete clauses are outlawed.

The economic risk of eliminating all physician non-compete clauses

No one has a crystal ball to predict all of the effects of a blanket elimination of non-compete clauses and history shows us that with every government policy decision comes unintended consequences. Here are some of the possible effects of eliminating physician non-compete clauses:

Increased healthcare costs. One of the concerns of the FTC’s proposed complete elimination of non-compete clauses is that it will be inflationary at a time when our economy is reeling from the highest inflation rates in 40 years. After all, a primary goal of banning non-compete clauses is to increase worker wages by increasing employer competition for those workers. Employers would then transfer the increased expenses of employee wages to consumers by increasing the price of goods and services. However, American medicine is a weird economy, and consumer prices are not as tightly bound to employer expenses. In the U.S., 45% of healthcare expenditures are paid by federal, state, or local governments with the largest component being Medicare and Medicaid. The price Medicare pays doctors and hospitals for any given medical service or procedure is determined every year by Congress and hospitals get paid the same amount no matter what their costs are to provide that service or procedure. If hospital costs go up because they have to pay doctors more, Medicare does not pay that hospital more money. Instead, hospitals increase the amount that they charge commercial insurance companies and self-pay patients. The danger of eliminating physician non-compete clauses is therefore an increase in commercial health insurance premiums to working Americans and an increase in the cost of healthcare to those who pay for healthcare out of pocket.

Lower pay for new physicians. The second risk of physician non-compete clauses is that it could reduce income for newly trained physicians, particularly surgeons and specialists. Hospitals would no longer be incentivized to pay for ramp-up periods for new surgeons or specialists and thus there could be a wider income separation between physicians straight out of residency and fellowship compared to those who have been out in practice for several years. Although it can be argued that this is the physician’s own cost of going from inexperienced/inefficient to experienced/efficient, those same physicians who are newly trained are those who are making student loan payments and thus have less disposable income to begin with. In academic medicine, these income gradations already exist with Assistant Professors earning less than Associate Professors who in turn make less than full Professors. If non-compete clauses go away, these seniority-based salaries may become more prevalent in non-academic medicine.

Higher pay for sub-specialists. Losing a hospitalist or an ER physician to a local competitor does not affect a hospital’s financial margin much but losing a reconstructive plastic surgeon or a joint replacement orthopedic surgeon can have a huge financial impact. Hospitals will be incentivized to pay more to those physicians who bring in the most money for the hospital. Because surgical procedures usually have the greatest financial margin for hospitals, subspecialty surgeons could see an increase in their salaries.

Better coffee in the physician lounge. If non-compete clauses are eliminated then physicians will be not only drawn to work for those hospitals that provide the highest salaries but also those hospitals that have the best physician amenities. This could mean providing free parking, bigger offices, free food, and more vacation time. It is often said that trying to run a hospital full of a bunch of doctors is like trying to run a business full of a bunch of CEOs. Without non-competes, those doctors will increasingly expect to be treated like CEOs.

More hospital mergers. One way to prevent a local competing hospital from hiring your physicians is to buy that competing hospital. If you have a monopoly on the local healthcare market, then you don’t have to worry about losing your physician employees since they would have to sell their house, uproot their kids, and move to a different community to get a job with a different hospital. For larger hospitals and hospital systems, the amount that they pay to physicians is a relatively small part of the annual budget. But for smaller hospitals that are just scraping by financially, the additional costs required to retain their doctors could be enough to force them to merge with larger health systems or even close.

Non-compete clauses should not impede reasonable competition

In a free market economy, employees will go to work for the employer who offers them the best job for the best salary. The strength of a free market economy is that this competition for the best employees is the invisible hand that encourages employers to provide optimal working conditions and pay more for the best workers. Excessive use of non-compete clauses creates employment monopolies and in the long-run, monopolies end up hurting the average consumer and hurting the overall economy.

Free market employment encourages innovation and efficiency. It is why the United States has been the envy of the world for the past 150 years when it comes to revolutionary inventions, technologic breakthroughs, and economic success. Injudicious use of non-compete employment clauses risk turning “workplace of choice” initiatives into “workplace of force” realities which can stifle innovation and efficiency.

But employers should reasonably expect to recover their financial investments. No one would expect a factory to spend $250,000 to buy a new machine and then be required to give that machine away 3 years later to a competitor for free. And we should not expect one hospital to spend $250,000 to train a physician only to have that physician go work for a competitor once completing their training. So, there has to be a compromise. Non-compete clauses should not be applied to all physicians but neither should they be eliminated completely.

Non-compete clauses (with options to buyout those clauses) should be reserved for those situations when hospitals invest a significant amount of money in a physician’s career development. For other physicians, non-solicitation clauses can protect the hospitals without negatively impacting a free-market competition for physician employment. Eliminating all physician non-compete clauses is unwise… but so is the indiscriminate use of non-compete clauses across the board to all physicians in all specialties. I hope that the FTC finds a way of protecting the right of physicians to chose their workplace while protecting the right of hospitals to recover their financial investments in physician career development. The answer to the physician non-compete controversy is not that they should always be used nor should they never be used but rather that they should sometimes be used.

February 15, 2023

The Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) is a federal program that forgives student loans for people who work for government or non-profit organizations. There are several eligibility requirements but many physicians qualify and can have hundreds of thousands of dollars of educational debt eliminated. How can a physician maximize the amount of money forgiven? Should PSLF eligibility be a factor in job selection? Should hospitals and other healthcare organizations promote PSLF eligibility as an employment incentive? As usual, the answers are all in the details.

 

What is the PSLF program?

Public Service Loan Forgiveness is a program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education. It was created by the College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007. This is a different program than the one-time student loan forgiveness program proposed by President Biden that would forgive up to $20,000 to anyone with student loan debt. In order to be eligible for the PSLF, an applicant must be employed by a qualifying employer for 10 years. Therefore, the first applicants became eligible in 2017, ten years after the law was passed. There were problems initially and 99% of the first 28,000 applicants were denied. Congress attempted to fix these problems with new legislation in 2018 but confusion and misinformation about eligibility requirements persisted. In, 2019, President Trump’s proposed budget included elimination of the PSLF program; however, the democrat-majority House of Representatives did not cut the program. By April 2020, only 2,215 borrowers had student loans forgiven under the PSLF, a denial rate of 98.5% since program inception. To address many of the problems with the PSLF, the federal government granted a temporary waiver for PSLF applications between October 6, 2021 and October 31, 2022. This waiver allowed application approval for people who were previously denied PSLF because of issues such as past late payments on loan installments. There are new, permanent changes to the PSLF program that will go into effect in July 2023 that will further address some of these issues. The current eligibility requirements are:

1. Have a William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan. Other federal student loans are not eligible but may be able to be consolidated into a Direct Loan to become eligible.
2. Be employed by a qualifying employer. These include federal, state, local, or tribal governments and not-for-profit organizations. This also includes the U.S. military and the Peace Corps.
3. Work full-time for that employer.
4. Repay loans under a qualifying income-based loan repayment plan. To qualify:
   1. Each payment must be for the full amount owed for that payment period
   2. Payments must be made no later than 15 days after the payment due date
   3. Payments must all have been made while employed by a qualifying employer
5. Previously make 120 loan installment payments (i.e., 10 years of repayments). All of these must have all been made after 2007 (inception date of the PSLF).
6. Have used a qualifying income-driven loan repayment plan. The type of repayment plan is critical and many common repayment plans are not eligible for PSLF including the Standard Repayment Plan for Direct Consolidation Loans, the Graduated Repayment Plan, the Extended Repayment Plan, and the Alternative Repayment Plan. Repayment plans that are eligible for PSLF include:
   1. Pay As You Earn Repayment Plan (PAYE Plan)
   2. Revised Pay As You Earn Repayment Plan (REPAYE Plan)
   3. Income-Based Repayment Plan (IBR Plan)
   4. Income-Contingent Repayment Plan (ICR Plan)
7. Submit a PSLF certification and application form every year to the Department of Education. This form requires entries by the borrower and also requires a signature from an authorized official of the employer who has the authority to certify the borrower’s employment. It is important that the borrower knows who to go to in the organization to get this signature:

Once the PSLF is approved, the federal government then forgives whatever amount remains on the Federal Direct Loan. Therefore, an important strategy is to make the lowest allowable amount in monthly payments so that there is the greatest amount left on the loan after 120 payments. The forgiven amount is not subject to federal income tax.

Many physicians are eligible

One of the results of the COVID pandemic was an acceleration of the trend for physicians to be employed by hospitals rather than private physician practices. A study reported in 2022 by the Physician Advocacy Group found that 75% of U.S. physicians are employed by a hospital or other corporate entity (such as a health insurer). Currently, 341,200 physicians (52% of U.S. physicians) are employed by a hospital.

The American Hospital Association reports that there are 6,093 hospitals in the United States. Of these, 1,228 are for-profit hospitals, 2,960 non-governmental not-for-profit hospitals, 951 state/local governmental hospitals, and 207 federal governmental hospitals. In addition, there are 635 non-federal psychiatric hospitals and 112 other hospitals (such as prison hospitals); many of these are also either not-for-profit or operated by a state or federal government. In other words, more than 70% of American hospitals are qualifying employers for PSLF purposes.

Medical school is expensive. Currently, 73% of medical school graduates have educational debt at the time of graduation. The average debt is $250,990 ($202,450 for medical school and $48,540 for undergraduate school). Many physicians funded their education at least in part through Federal Direct Loans. These loans are for $5,500 – $12,500 per year for undergraduates and up to $20,500 per year for graduate or professional students. The total maximum is $138,500. They are particularly attractive because they have lower interest rates than private educational loans and do not have as strict credit history requirements as private educational loans. Most students use a strategy of maximizing their Federal Direct Loan amounts before taking out more expensive and more restrictive private loans, for example, from a bank or credit union. There are other federal student loans that allow the student to borrow larger amounts of money. For example, a grad plus loan from the U.S. Department of Education can be for the entire amount of the cost of professional school. Other federal student loans (such as FFEL Program loans or Perkins Loan Program loans) are not themselves eligible for PSLF but can be consolidated into a Federal Direct Loan, thus increasing the amount of money that can be eventually forgiven using PSLF.

There are other loan forgiveness programs that physicians may be eligible for such as the National Health Service Corps Loan Repayment Program (underserved communities), the National Health Service Corps Students to Service Loan Repayment Program (primary care physicians in physician shortage areas), the National Health Service Corps Substance Use Disorder Workforce Loan Repayment Program (substance use disorder treatment facilities), the National Health Service Corps Rural Community Loan Repayment Program (substance use disorder treatment facilities in rural areas), the Indian Health Service Loan Repayment Program (Native American communities), the Armed Forces Loan Repayment Program (military physicians), and State Student Loan Forgiveness Programs (states with physician shortages). The PSLF program has the broadest inclusion criteria and is available to more physicians than the other loan forgiveness programs since the PSLF does not require moving to an underserved area, working in substance use disorder treatment, or joining the military.

I’m a medical student. How does the PSLF affect me?

The PSLF is designed to forgive student debt. Medical education is expensive and most of the educational debt generated by physicians is from medical school (rather than undergraduate college). It is important to be strategic when incurring educational debt. Here are some specific tactics that medical students can use:

• Maximize PSLF-eligible loans. This means starting with the William D. Ford Federal Direct Loans. Only use other student loans after you have taken as much as permitted from the Federal Direct Loans. Try to avoid private loans if at all possible.
• Consolidate other federal student loans into a Federal Direct Loan as soon as possible. Many loans can be consolidated into a Federal Direct Loan and this can greatly increase the amount of money that will eventually be eligible for PSLF. However, consolidation resets your PSLF eligible payments to zero so if you have already made payments on your Federal Direct Loan and then consolidate, you will lose credit for all of those payments you have previously made. Ideally, you should consolidate all loans immediately after graduation from medical school, before you make your first loan repayment installment in residency.
• Keep your total debt as low as possible. Private medical schools are more expensive than public medical schools and do not necessarily result in a better education. Do a careful analysis of the total cost of each medical school when selecting which schools you apply to. Keep your living expenses low by living with roommates, cooking your own meals, and making purchases judiciously.
• Don’t forget scholarships. Unlike loans, scholarships do not need to be repaid. A $50,000 scholarship beats a $50,000 loan every day. Check with your medical school’s office of financial aid and apply for any scholarships that you are eligible for.
• Know whether your residency employment will be eligible for PSLF qualification. Most residencies are at not-for-profit hospitals but if your residency is at a for-profit hospital and your employer during residency is that hospital, then your loan payments made during residency will not count toward the 120 necessary to be eligible for PSLF. Moreover, you lose the advantage of making your lower monthly loan payments when your income is lower during residency and as a result, when you do eventually apply for PSLF, you will not be able to have as much money forgiven. When applying to residencies, ask if the organization that you get your paycheck from either is a government employer or is a tax-exempt employer under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

I’m a resident. How does the PSLF affect me?

As soon as you start residency, you are employed and thus must start making payments on your student loans. However, with income-driven repayment plans, the amount you pay each month depends on your annual income. Here are some tactics to pay the least over your 10-year repayment period in order to have the greatest amount forgiven under PSLF:

• Start making loan payments early. Do not opt for using grace periods or deferment to delay starting payments. The amount of monthly payments depends on how high your income is. Your strategy should be to make as many payments as possible when your income is low during residency and make as few as possible when your income is higher as an attending. By using this tactic, you will have a larger amount still owed on your loan when you become eligible for PSLF and therefore will have a larger amount that can be forgiven.
• Don’t pay Federal Direct Loans off early. It feels really, really good to be debt-free and it can be tempting to try to make extra, early payments on student loans during residency and as a new attending physician. However, if you work for an employer that qualifies you for PSLF, then every early loan payment that you make is less money that can be forgiven once you are 10 years out of medical school. With PSLF, it is far better to be debt-smart than to be debt-free.
• Keep your annual income low. As a resident, it can be tempting to do a few moonlighting shifts each month to buy a new car or to go on a Caribbean vacation. But the money earned from those moonlighting shifts increases your annual taxable income and therefore increases your monthly payments on an income-driven repayment plan. This will result in a lower amount of loan forgiveness after you have made 120 monthly payments and are eligible for PSLF. On the other hand, contributing to a 403b, 457, or traditional IRA can reduce your annual taxable income, resulting in a lower monthly repayment amount which then increases the total amount of your loan that can be forgiven by PSLF. Each physician weighs the benefits of extra disposable income against the cost of higher loan payments differently.
• If your spouse makes a lot of money, consider filing separately for federal income taxes. This keeps your own taxable income low and thus keeps the amount of your monthly payments as a resident low. The result is that a larger amount of your loan can be forgiven by PSLF. By filing separately rather than jointly, you may pay slightly more in income taxes as a resident but the amount of money eventually forgiven could be much greater.

I’m a physician. Should I base a career choice on the PSLF?

The PSLF program is attractive to doctors since it has the potential to wipe out hundreds of thousands of dollars of educational debt. But for a physician completing residency or fellowship, basing a job choice on whether or not that job will result in PSLF eligibility can be hazardous. There are several reasons why a new physician should not base a career decision mainly on PSLF eligibility.

• It might go away. A PSLF applicant must first work for a qualifying employer for 10 years. Ten years is an eternity when it comes to federal funding. It is 3 different presidential terms and 5 different congressional terms. Inevitably, there will be swings in which political party controls the presidency and the U.S. House of Representatives. The PSLF has been on the chopping block before and it may be again before new physicians entering the workforce this year become eligible.
• Don’t sell your dreams. Maybe you have always aspired to take over a solo practice in your home town. Maybe your ideal job is to work for a for-profit healthcare company such as HCA. Maybe you would like to work part-time for a few years when your children are young. In these situations, you won’t be eligible for the PSLF. But if PSLF eligibility means taking a job that you won’t be passionate about or compromises your desired work-life balance, then the cost of PSLF may be too high.
• You might change your mind. I am a unicorn – a doctor who stayed at the same health system as a medical student, resident, fellow, and attending physician for 41 years. Few physicians stay with the same employer for their entire career. Historically, between 40% and 70% of physicians change jobs in their first 5 years of practice. During the first 2 years of the COVID pandemic alone, 43% of physicians changed jobs. Maybe your spouse has to relocate to a different city. Maybe you don’t get along with your colleagues. Maybe your hospital closes. If you change jobs in the first 10 years of practice and your new employer is not a qualified employer for PSLF purposes, then you won’t be eligible for PSLF. On the other hand, once your loans are forgiven by PSLF, you are free to go work for whoever you want, wherever you want.
• You might be financially better off without PSLF. Government jobs usually pay less than private practice jobs for physicians. Not-for-profit hospitals often pay physicians less than for–profit hospitals. With PSLF, you will still need to make required repayments every month for 10 years and the amount that you will be forgiven is only the amount remaining on your Federal Direct Loans at the end of those 10 years. In the long run, you may come out ahead financially by taking a job that does not qualify for PSLF but pays a few thousand dollars a year more than a job that qualifies for PSLF. This is particularly true if the amount of money you take out for Federal Direct Loans is relatively modest, for example, less than $50,000. On the other hand, if you estimate that your student loan balance after your first 120 monthly payments will be $500,000, then taking a private practice job in order to earn an extra $20,000 per year compared to an academic job does not make financial sense.
• You aren’t compulsive with paying off bills. To be eligible for PSLF, you have to make your repayments in full, every month. If you miss monthly payments or run out of money at the end of the month and can’t make a full payment, then you lose eligibility.
• You’re prone to getting caught up in moral dilemmas. When the federal government forgives educational loans, it means that the American taxpayers are paying for your education. For some people, this is perceived as a handout and physicians earn enough that they may feel they don’t deserve a handout. Elected officials from 11 states declined to participate in Medicaid expansion because they were ideologically opposed to taking federal tax money to care for the poor in their state. If you are a person who won’t be able to sleep at night if the federal government helps pay for your medical school debt, then the PSLF may not be for you.
• Shorter rather than longer residency. The 120 payment clock starts ticking once you graduate from medical school. As a resident and fellow, you earn less than an attending physician but with an income-driven repayment plan (such as PAYE or REPAYE), you also have smaller monthly loan payments while still in training. If you enter a specialty that requires 3 years of residency, then you will have 7 years of high monthly payments as an attending physician before you are eligible for PSLF. However, if you enter a specialty that requires 7 years of residency and fellowship, then you will only have 3 years of high monthly payments as an attending physician before PSLF eligibility. Physicians with the longest residencies/fellowships have the most to gain financially from PSLF.

The bottom line is that hoping to qualify for PSLF should never be the main factor in career decision making. However, when it comes down to two equally attractive jobs, qualifying for PSLF can be a tie-breaker.

I employ physicians. How can I leverage PSLF?

If you are the medical director of a not-for-profit hospital, use your hospital’s PSLF qualification as a physician recruitment incentive. Here are some tactics you can use to your advantage:

• Tell physician recruits that the hospital meets PSLF employer qualification. Many residents and fellows do not fully understand the differences between for-profit and not-for-profit hospitals and often accept jobs without even knowing which type their new hospital is. There is also a difference between working for a not-for-profit hospital and working at a not-for-profit hospital. A physician employed by a private practice medical group that works at a not-for-profit hospital will not qualify for PSLF.
• Advertise that the hospital signs the employment certification each year. This is a required element of the PSLF application. By telling physician recruits up front that you are aware of the need for these annual certifications and are willing to sign them in a timely fashion, you indicate to the recruits that you are knowledgeable about the PSLF process and will be there to assist them without creating any barriers. Medical directors and hospital administrators have hundreds of forms that need to be signed every month and they often get behind in completing them in a timely fashion – make sure that physician recruits know that you place a priority on the PSLF certification signatures.
• Have a designated physician loan navigator. Hospitals often agonize over whether or not to pay a physician a one-time $20,000 signing bonus. But PSLF can amount to as much as a $650,000 savings to a physician with no cost to the hospital. Therefore, ensuring that physicians meet eligibility and apply correctly can translate to millions of dollars of financial benefit to the medical staff. Designating a staff member from the hospital’s finance department or medical staff office to devote a percentage of their FTE to helping physicians manage their loans can be a terrific hospital investment. Responsibilities could include helping physicians consolidate federal loans into Direct Loans, helping fill out PSLF applications, ensuring employer certification signatures get done, helping physicians develop strategies to ensure full and timely monthly payments, etc.
• Provide regular PSLF updates. There is no class on financial health in medical school. Most newly trained physicians do not fully understand investing, taxes, retirement planning, or personal budgeting. Because the first borrowers only became eligible for PSLF in 2017, many physicians are not even aware that the program exists, particularly if they graduated from medical school before 2017. By incorporating news about developments in the PSLF program into your medical staff meetings, you send a signal to the physicians that the hospital cares about them. Doctors talk to each other and when your medical staff tell their friends that the hospital cares about physician financial health, it helps you to attract top physicians. PSLF then becomes a line item for the medical director’s annual “Workplace of Choice” goals.

Never turn down free money

If you are a physician with Federal Direct Loans and have been employed by a government or not-for-profit healthcare organization for the past 10 years, then you may be eligible for free money with no strings attached. You have won the lottery without having to buy a lottery ticket. This kind of thing rarely happens in life so don’t let the opportunity pass by. If you are a medical director or administrator at a not-for-profit hospital then many of your doctors are eligible for free money. If you help them get it, it will foster their loyalty for years to come.

February 12, 2023

Can I afford to buy a new car this year? How much can I afford to put into my 401(k) each month? In order to answer these questions, every person or family needs to have an annual budget so that they can estimate what their basic living expenses will be, how much they can save for retirement, and how much they have for discretionary spending. Every company and every hospital does this when creating its annual budget for the next fiscal year. But we are often less diligent about making our personal budgets than we are making our hospital or corporate budgets. In theory, making a budget for yourself sounds easy – just estimate how much income you anticipate and how much expenses you anticipate. But budgeting is deceptively difficult and you can be misled depending on what sources you use for income and expense calculations. Here is an accurate way to create your annual budget.

Where to start: total income

 

The first step is to estimate your income for the upcoming year. If all of your income comes from your wages from your employer, then this is simple – just look at last year’s income and add in the amount of any raises or bonuses you expect next year. However, most people also have additional income from dividends, capital gains, and interest from investments. Or maybe a side gig from consulting, speaking honoraria, or rental income. These extra sources of income are often variable from year to year and it can be difficult to predict what the amount of these other income sources will be next year. So, you will need to gather data from multiple sources:

Do Use:

• Final annual payslip. This will have your total gross pay which is the amount that you earned from salary and bonuses last year before any tax deductibles are subtracted out. Gross pay is what you want to use when preparing your budget. Your final payslip will also show the amount you paid for employer-sponsored health insurance, 401k/403b/457 contributions, pension contributions, etc.
• 1099 forms. These will contain additional income from consulting (or other outside employment), dividends, interest, and capital gains.
• Records from other income. This can include cash payments you receive for gig work, income from rental property, etc. These will often be reported on Schedule C of your federal income tax returns so the Schedule C form from last year can serve as a useful source for this information.

Don’t Use:

• W-2 forms. The income reported on various lines on your  W-2 forms will be adjusted for tax deductions, such as employer-sponsored health insurance premiums, 401k/403b/457 pre-tax contributions, etc.
• IRS 1040 forms. The various entries on the 1040 form come from your W-2 forms and will have similar adjustments with the result that your income on the 1040 form will be less than the final gross pay that appears on your final annual payslip.

By adding up all of the income from all of these various sources, you can determine what your total gross income was last year.

Where to start: total expenses

Most of us do not do a very good job of tracking where all of our money goes each year. Some expenses are taken out pre-tax by our employer and we never even see that money. We pay for stuff with checks, credit cards, and cash. Families may have multiple checking accounts and several different credit cards.

I recommend staring with your checking account. The reason for that is that most people use their checking account as the central hub of their personal finances. We usually deposit our monthly paychecks as well as other income from consulting etc. into our checking accounts. We also draw from those checking accounts for paying expenses directly (by writing checks), taking cash from ATMs, and paying off our monthly credit card balances. Your monthly credit card statement will list your total deposits and total withdrawals as well as the details for each specific transaction.

• Add up all of your monthly checking total withdrawals. Do this for each checking account that you and your spouse have.
• Subtract out any expenses that you pay but that you later get reimbursed for. For example, work-related travel if you pay for your hotel and airfare but then get reimbursed for those expenses by your employer after the travel. You will need to go through all of your individual checking account withdrawals and credit card charges to find these expenses.
• Subtract out withdrawals from your checking account that were for transfers to your other checking accounts. This can happen if you have checking accounts at two different banks or if you move money to a spouse’s checking account.
• Transfers to children’s checking accounts are different and I recommend not subtracting out these withdrawals and instead including them as part of your basic living expenses in order to keep the budgeting process as simple as possible.
• Account for transfers to savings accounts and money market accounts. You should always keep a pre-determined amount of money in these accounts as your emergency fund. But many people also use these accounts for short-term savings, with the intention of spending money in these accounts in the next few months. In this situation, you need to determine if you pay expenses directly from those savings and money market accounts or whether you “park” money there temporarily and then transfer it back to your checking account to pay expenses. To avoid double counting, do not include transfers from checking to savings accounts or checking to money market accounts in your total expense withdrawal calculations. But do include any expenses you pay directly from savings or money market accounts in your total annual expense withdrawals.

By adding up all of these withdrawals, you will have the total amount that you spend each year from your take-home pay. It takes a moderate amount of time to go through all of your monthly checking account statements but they are generally available through your on-line banking account website so the process goes fairly quickly.

Categorize your expenses

 

This can get very complicated so I recommend just using very general, broad categories to make the process as simple as possible:

1. Income taxes
2. Retirement savings
3. Non-retirement investments
4. Education expenses
5. Insurance
6. Discretionary spending
7. Basic living expenses

 

You will need to go to various sources to assemble all of the data you need to stratify expenses into these various categories. For income taxes, the easiest way to determine your total taxes from your federal, state, and local income tax forms from the previous year. Be sure that you have included both your regular federal income tax plus your Social Security/Medicare tax.

For the retirement savings category, start with your end-of-the-year payslip. This will contain information about your 401k/403b/457 contributions and pension plan contributions. Do not include any employer contributions to those plans, only your own contributions. Next, look at your checking accounts and credit card statements to pick out transfers into other retirement accounts such as an annual IRA contribution, SEP contribution, or backdoor Roth contribution.

For the non-retirement investment category, pick out any withdrawals from checking, savings, money market, or credit card accounts that went into purchasing stocks, bonds, mutual funds, certificates of deposit, etc. Alternatively, if all of your non-retirement investments go through an investment company (such as Vanguard, T. Rowe Price, or Fidelity), you can look up your annual investment purchases on your annual statement from the investment company.

For educational expenses, include money that you transferred into 529 college savings accounts and money paid directly from your checking accounts to schools for tuition, etc. If you use other accounts to save for your children’s college education (such as uniform gifts to minors accounts), then include these as well.

For insurance expenses, start with your end-of-the-year payslip for premiums you pay for employer-sponsored health, vision, dental, disability, and life insurance premiums. These will generally appear as pre-tax or tax-deductible expenses on your payslip. Once again, do not include any insurance that your employer pays for, only include your own contributions to insurance premiums. Add in payments from your checking, savings, or credit card accounts for other insurance premiums such as homeowner’s, car, life, and umbrella insurance.

Discretionary spending is more complex and depends on what you define as being discretionary vs. basic living expenses. It is better to over-simplify your definition of “discretionary” to avoid the expense accounting process from getting to onerous. I recommend only including “big ticket items”, like vacations and new car purchases, since those are fairly easy to track. Add in other high-cost but non-essential items such as new TVs, computers, appliance upgrades, season sports tickets, and elective home renovations. Many credit card companies and banks will have “money manager” apps on your on-line credit card and checking accounts that will automatically group credit card charges or checks into categories like travel, entertainment, etc. and you can alternatively use these apps to calculate discretionary spending.

Basic living expenses are everything that is left over. It can be argued that things like movie theater tickets, new clothes, and wine purchases are better characterized as discretionary expenses but for most of us, it would take hours and hours to group each of these small expenses as being either basic living or discretionary expenses. It is easier to put them in the basic living expense category but then realize that in a financial emergency, you could cut back somewhat on the amount that you have historically spent on basic living expenses. Because everyone should have an emergency fund of at least 3 (and preferably 6) months of basic living expenses, this number is useful to help guide you about the minimum amount of money that you should keep at all times in your combined checking, savings, and money market accounts. A lot of different types of expenses will be lumped into basic living expenses including housing, food, utilities, property tax, transportation, license fees, annual dues, and loan payments.

Putting the budget together

Once you have all of the financial information and have categorized your previous year’s expenses, you can plan for next year. Start with your projected income. For most people, this will be similar to their previous year’s income plus the amount of any raises that are expected in the coming year. If your income is similar to the previous year’s, then your taxes will also be similar, unless you are moving to a different city or state. The current federal income tax rates are set to increase after 2025 (unless there is congressional legislation to continue the current rates) so your budgeting for 2025 and beyond will need to take into account any changes in tax rates. For most people, insurance premiums will also be same or just slightly higher, unless they anticipate a change in marital status or change in spousal coverage by health insurance. Health insurance premiums are the biggest insurance expense and by January, you should know what your premiums will be for the upcoming year. For basic living expenses and discretionary spending, you should account for the effect of inflation. No one can predict with certainty what the inflation rate will be 12 months from now so a reasonable estimate can be made by using the rolling 12-month inflation rate from the previous month. So, for example, the 12-month inflation rate in December 2022 was 6.5%. Therefore, increase your expected 2023 basic living and discretionary spending amounts by 6.5%. Next, factor in any large expenses that you know will occur in the next 12 months, such as a wedding, a new car, or a down payment for a new house. Add these one-time expenses into next year’s discretionary expenses. Use last year’s values for retirement savings and for educational expenses as a starting point for next year’s budget.

At this point, you will have accounted for your anticipated income as well as most of your planned expenses for the upcoming year. If the difference between income and expenses is a positive number, great news! – you can afford to put additional money into investments, retirement savings, educational expenses, or discretionary spending. On the other hand, if this is a negative number, you will need to look hard at your discretionary spending or investment spending to see if there are expenses in those categories that you can cut out. Although you could also reduce contributions to retirement savings or educational savings, I would caution against this unless you are desperate since those expenses are really paying for your future annual income in the case of retirement savings, or for future unavoidable expenses in the case of education saving.

January is the best time to do your annual budget. By January, you should have your year-end payslip from the previous year and will have at least started preparing your income tax returns. Beginning in January 2023, there is a $2,000 increase in the annual contribution limits to 401k/403b/457 plans so January is a good time to increase the amount of your monthly contributions to those plans. Although you could wait until December to do one massive contribution to your 401k/403b/457 or to your child’s 529 account, it is better to spread those contributions out to take advantage of “dollar-cost averaging” and also to let those contributions start to grow in your retirement account or 529 account investments over the course of the upcoming year.

Everyone needs a budget

Many people with relatively high incomes (such as physicians), often neglect doing an annual budget, believing that their income is high enough that they won’t run out of money by the end of the year. In reality, everyone needs to create an annual budget and people with high-incomes can spend more than they earn as easily as those with lower incomes. It is particularly important to go through the budget process if you anticipate a major change in your life in the upcoming year – a new job, marriage, new child, etc. Creating a budget is somewhat a skill – the first year you do it, the budget process takes a moderate amount of effort. But each year, it gets progressively easier to create your annual budget as you get more experience with the process.

Once you have that budget, stick to it and use it as a roadmap for your monthly expenditures. This is the best way to be sure that you are able to pay off all of your credit cards every month, make all of your monthly loan payments, stick to your retirement contributions, and ensure your children’s college future. Your annual budget today is your insurance that you will be able to afford to retire when you want to retire.

We cannot predict the future national or global economy but we can control our own future personal economy. Controlling it starts with your annual budget.

January 29, 2023

A reader recently emailed me to ask: “How do you define a hospitalist FTE?” It turns out that it is a great question with a very nuanced answer. Twenty years ago, an FTE was whatever a physician wanted it to be. Physician earnings were directly tied to physician billing and so a physician would work as much as they wanted in order to generate the income that they wanted. But over the past 2 decades, revenue from physician professional services has not changed appreciably – in 2002, Medicare reimbursed physicians at $36.20 per RVU; in 2022, an RVU was worth $34.61.

To put that in perspective, $1.00 in 2002 is worth $1.66 in 2022 whereas an RVU is now worth $1.59 less than it was in 2002! In order to keep physician incomes constant, hospitals have had to increasingly subsidize physicians. As a result, most physicians are now hospital-employed, rather than independent practitioners. This is especially true for hospitalists who rarely, if ever, are able to support their full salary on billings alone. In the past, the physicians defined what working full-time constitutes but today, it is the hospitals that define what working full-time means for a hospitalist.

Hospitals typically subsidize hospitalist groups based on the number of FTEs (full-time equivalents) that are required in order to cover the hospital’s inpatients. But defining exactly what an FTE is can be complicated and often a source of disagreement between the hospital and the hospitalist group. There are a number of equally valid ways of defining “full-time” and no one definition works best in every hospital. There are several steps to determine the best model in your hospital.

Step 1: Determine the number of patients per hospitalist per day

The number of patients each hospitalist should see per day will vary considerably from hospital to hospital and from nursing unit to nursing unit. There are 19 factors to consider when determining this number as outlined in a previous post:

• • • Case mix index
    • Residents versus no residents
    • Admitting service versus consultative service
    • Presence or absence of advance practice providers
    • ICU versus general ward patients
    • Day shift versus night shift
    • Observation status versus regular inpatient status
    • Ease of documentation
    • Shared electronic medical record with primary care physicians
    • Non-clinical duties
    • Shift duration (hours)
    • Hospitalist experience
    • Patient geographical location within the hospital
    • Average length of stay
    • Inpatient census variability
    • RVU productivity
    • Quality of case management
    • Local hospitalist employment market
    • Patient demographics

There has to be flexibility, however, and rigid adherence to a given number of patients is a recipe for dissatisfaction on both the part of the hospital and the part of the hospitalist. If the hospital inpatient census falls, then the hospital will be unhappy that each on-duty hospitalist is not seeing enough patients. On the other hand, if the inpatient census surges, then the hospitalists will be unhappy since they have to see more patients than they agreed on in their contracts. Many hospitals will have a “risk-call” hospitalist each day who is on standby to come in to work if needed when the inpatient census is higher than normal.

Step 2: Determine how the hospitalists will be scheduled

Early in the hospitalist era, scheduling was simple: a shift was 12 hours long and there were two shifts – a day shift and a night shift. Hospitalist schedules have gotten a lot more complex in recent years as outlined in a previous post. Now, hospitalists often have 8-hour short day shifts and evening swing shifts to cover ER admissions in the early evenings. As a result, scheduling hospitalists has become much more complex. Here are some of the scheduling models:

The 12-hour shift model. This was the original hospitalist scheduling model and typically will have two 12-hour shifts per day, a day shift and a night shift. The day shift is typically 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM or 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM. The night shift starts when the day shift is over. Day shifts and night shifts are treated equally but since night shifts are considered less desirable by most hospitalists, there needs to be a “shift differential” to provide extra payment for covering night shifts. Many hospitals will also provide additional pay for hospitalists who work on holidays. Because most patient care (work rounds, interdisciplinary rounds, daily charting, discharges, family meetings, etc.) occurs during the day shift, hospitals will typically have 1 night shift hospitalist for every 3 -4 day shift hospitalists. High acuity patient care areas, such as the intensive care unit, may require 1 night shift hospitalist for every 1 day shift hospitalist.

The long-shift, short-shift model. In this model, one or more hospitalists works the entire 12-hour day shift but other hospitalists leave earlier in the day, after their work is done. The short-shift hospitalists check out to one of the long-shift hospitalists when leaving. The long-shift hospitalist is then responsible for any admissions that come in later in the day. Some hospitalist groups will have the short-shift hospitalists continue to take phone calls from nurses, the lab, and consultants after they leave the hospital; other hospitalist groups will have the long-shift hospitalists cover calls. Some hospitals will have a specific check-out time for the short-shift hospitalists, for example, 3:00 PM. Other hospitals will have the short-shift hospitalists check out whenever their work is completed, whether that be 1:00 PM or 5:00 PM. An advantage of this model is that it avoids having a lot of hospitalists sitting around doing nothing in the late afternoon, after all of their work is done. In addition, this model is very attractive to hospitalists with children, since they can be home when the kids get out of school.

The swing-shift model. In most hospitals, the peak in admissions from the emergency department occurs between 3:00 PM and midnight. After midnight, the admissions slow down, the inpatients go to sleep, and the hospitalist workload drops. To optimize patient care coverage, some hospitals will create a “swing-shift” to cover the surge in admissions during the evening. Every hospital’s pattern of ER admission is different so swing-shifts could be from 3:00 to midnight, 5:00 to 10:00, etc.

The comprehensive services model. In many hospitals, the hospitalists do more than just serve as the attending physician for inpatients. For example, they may perform medical pre-operative consultation in an outpatient pre-admission testing clinic. They may provide medical consultation for surgical inpatients. They may have a designated “triage attending” to serve as a liaison between the hospitalist services and the emergency department or the outside referring hospitals. Or they may provide on-site supervision of infusion centers. In these situations (except for triage attending), the duration of a shift is determined by whenever the work is done, rather than by a specific time of day or number of hours. In general, these other services require fewer than 12 hours per day. These types of services are often attractive to hospitalists with young children since they are generally able to get home earlier than they would with a traditional 12-hour inpatient hospitalist shift.

Step 3: Determine how a 100% FTE will be defined

Once the hospital has determined how many inpatients a rounding hospitalist should cover and how the hospitalists are to be scheduled, the next step is to determine what will constitute a 100% FTE hospitalist. There are several ways of defining an FTE.

The shifts per month model. This works best when all of the hospitalists work 12-hour shifts. A full-time hospitalist is typically defined as 15 or 16 shifts per month (180 – 192 shifts per year). It generally takes about a half hour to check out at the end of every shift with the result that a 12-hour shift is really a 12.5-hour shift. This works out to about 43 – 46 hours per week on average. Some hospitals will grant additional time off for vacations and CME with the result that full-time may be fewer shifts per year, for example, 170 shifts.

The hours per month model. This model works when there there are different hospitalist shifts of varying durations. In this model, a hospitalist may be scheduled for shifts of a variety of durations up to some pre-agreed upon number of total hours per month. This results in a great deal of scheduling complexity and often requires considerable effort by the scheduler to ensure equity among the hospitalists. Many jobs define an FTE as 40 hours per week, however, most physicians work more than that. Although physician time surveys vary, most find that physicians average closer to 50 hours per week. If we extrapolate from the 15 – 16 twelve hour shifts per month model that results in 43 – 46 hours per week, then this would equate to 2,236 – 2,392 hours per year. Rigid adherence to a specific number of hours per year is difficult. Unlike other hospital employees, hospitalists do not punch in and out on a time clock. There are always some days when a hospitalist needs to stay in the hospital past the end of their shift to finish charting, complete the H&P on a late admission, or provide care for a critically ill patient. In addition, some hospitalists may check-out early to one of their peers once they complete their daily work.

The number of billed wRVUs model. If you look in the annual MGMA physician salary survey, you can find the mean, median, 25th percentile, 75th percentile, and 90th percentile of work RVUs  produced by physicians in every specialty. Using wRVUs as a general guide of FTE productivity can be useful for many specialties but as discussed in a previous post, it is inadvisable to pay individual hospitalists by the wRVU. Nor is it advisable to use wRVU targets to define an FTE. If wRUVs are used to benchmark hospitalist productivity, the RVU targets need to be for the entire hospitalist group and not for individual hospitalists. There is too much variation in RVU production intrinsic to different types of hospitalist shifts – fewer RVUs with night shifts, more with ICU shifts, and none for triage attending shifts. In other words, rather than requiring each of your 10 hospitalists to produce 4,300 wRVUs per year, instead require the entire group of hospitalists to produce 43,000 wRVUs per year.

The traditional workweek model. Most outpatient physicians define full-time as traditional office hours, working Monday through Friday, 8:00 – 5:00. With physician offices often closed on weekends, evenings, and holidays, this works fairly well for outpatient medicine. This model is harder to apply to hospitalists because illnesses requiring inpatient care are just as likely to occur on weekends and holidays as they are on weekdays. Therefore, hospitalists need to cover every day of the year. Nevertheless, some hospitals will have a core group of hospitalists who cover Monday through Friday day shifts. Part-time hospitalists or moonlighters cover weekends. And nights are either covered by home call, by inpatient advance practice providers, or by nocturnists. This model can sometimes work in smaller hospitals that care for lower acuity patients but is impractical in larger hospitals. The weekday hospitalists typically take care of their daily rounds and any admissions. They then leave the hospital in the afternoon, after their work is done. A typical full-time hospitalist in this model might work 46 weeks with 4 weeks of vacation, a week of CME, and a week for holidays. This equates to 230 working days per year.

The academic hospitalist model. In many teaching hospitals, the attending physicians on medical inpatient services are hospitalists who oversee care provided by internal medicine, family medicine, or pediatric residents. In this situation, the residents typically cover a given inpatient service for 4-week blocks. The attending hospitalist typically covers the teaching service daily for 2 weeks, although at some hospitals, the hospitalist covers the service for shorter (1 week) or longer (4 week) blocks. Because residents are in the hospital to perform H&Ps and care for any acute medical problems, the hospitalist can often leave the hospital after rounding with the resident and completing charting. This results in the hospitalist typically being in the hospital for 5 – 8 hours per day. The attending hospitalists generally provide back-up coverage to the residents at night by home call, either individually for their particular inpatient service or on a group rotational night call basis. Unlike the traditional workweek model, the academic hospitalist model generally requires both weekday and weekend coverage in order to ensure continuity of patient care and continuity of resident education. Thus, full time is considered less than 46 weeks and may be anywhere from 6 months (182 days per year) to 8 months (243 days per year) of service time.

Step 4: Determine how a part-time FTE will be defined

Once there is agreement between the hospital and the hospitalists on what will constitute a full-time FTE, it then becomes easier to assign a percent effort to part-time physicians and to determine how those part-time hospitalists will be paid.

For compensation of hospitalists who work less than 100% FTE, the easy answer is to make their base pay the same percent as their FTE. However, that can pose more cost to the employer since there are certain employer-paid expenses that are fixed, regardless of whether a hospitalist is 100% or 70% FTE. For example, the employer’s portion of health insurance premiums and life insurance premiums is the same for part-time employees as it is for full-time employees. Similarly, the employer’s cost of recruitment and credentialing is the same whether the hospitalist is 100% or 70%. In other words, it costs the employer more to have 2 hospitalists who each work 50% FTE than to have 1 hospitalist who works 100% FTE. Most hospitals are willing to cover those higher costs in order to keep high-performing hospitalists who wants to work part-time, particularly if there is a reasonable chance that the hospitalist will eventually return to 100% FTE in the future. For example, an experienced hospitalist who is a parent who wants to cut back to 70% for a few years until his/her child is older.

One size does not fit all

From the above discussion, it is clear that no one single model is best for all hospitals. Each hospital (and each hospitalist group) must examine its own unique inpatient service coverage needs in order to select the definition of “full-time” that fits best. From the hospital standpoint, it is important to be flexible and work with the hospitalists to be sure that they are happy with the model. From the hospitalist standpoint, it is important to ensure that a model that optimizes their work-life balance does not interfere with optimal patient care.

Because hospital censuses ebb and flow from year to year and because new hospitalists are hired from year to year, it is important that every hospital re-examines how full-time is defined periodically to ensure that the agreed upon model best fits the dynamic nature of inpatient medicine.

December 10, 2022

As a physician, I have spent decades diagnosing diseases and then prescribing treatments. For many diseases, there is more than one single cause and there are more than one possible treatment. Sometimes the treatment is easy but sometimes the treatment is worse than the disease. Inflation is no different. Here is how to fix inflation from a physician’s vantage point, when we look at inflation the way we look at a disease.

What causes inflation?

In 1976, my college macroeconomics professor said that understanding inflation at its basic level is simple – it is too many dollars chasing too few goods and services. 46 years later, that central tenet is still true: inflation occurs when demand exceeds supply. In this sense, inflation is similar to a medical condition like respiratory failure. In respiratory failure, the patient gets short of breath when the body’s demand for oxygen exceeds the supply of oxygen that the lungs can deliver. The treatment of respiratory failure is to either increase the supply of oxygen being delivered to the body’s tissues or reduce the demand for oxygen by the body’s tissues. Preferably, you do both.

Like respiratory failure, there is usually not just one simple cause of inflation but instead there are several alterations in the things that cause demand for goods and services as well as the things that affect the supply of goods and services. Although demand can be affected by changes in what consumers want to purchase, it is more often caused by the amount of money consumers have in their hands to make purchases. In our nation’s current bout of inflation, there are contributions from both the supply side and the demand side. In addition, there is an effect of the national psychology attendant to inflation expectations.

1. Alterations in demand for goods and services:

   1. Increased disposable income from COVID relief programs. When COVID surged, the U.S. unemployment rate spiked and the government response was to inject money into the economy in the form of COVID relief checks. This resulted in many Americans having cash on hand and no place to spend it during the COVID isolation period. In 2021 and 2022, when isolation restrictions eased up, many Americans started to spend these built up cash reserves and we all started to buy stuff.
   2. Exceptionally low interest rates to borrow money since 2010. Borrowing money has never been less expensive in the U.S. as it has been for the past 12 years. Low interest rates result in more people buying houses and cars. Low interest also result in companies borrowing more money to expand their business operations. As more people borrow money, there is more money circulating in the economy and that results in more money available to spend on goods and services.
   3. Historically low federal income tax rates enacted by the 2018 income tax cuts. The current U.S. income tax rates are among the lowest Americans have had in generations. This graph shows the effective income tax rates for all incomes in 2016 (before the 2018 tax cuts) and in 2020 (after the 2018 tax cuts). As a result of these tax cuts, all Americans had more money to spend on goods and services over the past year.
   4. Federal student loan forgiveness programs. In August 2022, President Biden authorized $10,000 per person federal student loan forgiveness ($20,000 for those with Pell grants). This week, former students can start to apply for those funds. The economic effect of this will not be felt until individuals get their forgiveness applications approved but many affected Americans have already changed their spending habits based on the expectation that they will have $10,000 or $20,000 more to spend on goods and services than they had budgeted for earlier this year.
   5. Increasing federal deficit spending since 2002. The U.S. government has a long habit of spending more money than it takes in each year. In fact, the only years that the government ran an annual surplus in recent memory were in 1998 – 2001 due to combined efforts by Democratic president Bill Clinton and Republican House Budgetary Chairman John Kasich. When the government spends money, it primarily goes to purchasing goods and services and puts more money in the hands of Americans that produce those goods and services.

2. Alterations in supply of goods and services:

   1. COVID brought supply chain disruptions. These disruptions made it difficult to get foreign-produced products into the United States. These supply chain disruptions also made it difficult to get raw materials and production components into the U.S. resulting in decreased domestic production. As a result, products such as appliances made abroad and U.S.-manufactured cars that depend on foreign-made computer chips became suddenly scarce.
   2. Changes in consumer buying patterns during COVID. As a result of the pandemic, Americans wanted computers in order to work from home and wanted new suburban homes to work and live in. This resulted in heightened demand for houses and computers. There were also transient demand spikes for toilet paper and subscription video streaming services, like Netflix. During the pandemic, consumers could not spend money on services (like travel, restaurants, and concerts) and shifted their spending patterns to goods, like appliances, TVs, and furniture. Quite rapidly, the demand for these goods exceeded the supply of these goods.
   3. COVID rebound spending. As isolation practices eased, Americans started to act on their pent-up consumption appetite. We started eating out at restaurants again. We began planning vacations involving air travel and car rental. We started buying new clothes to wear as we returned to the office. But restaurants had just recently laid off staff, airlines had stopped replacing retired pilots, and car rental companies had sold off their rental car stocks. As a result, these industries were unable to meet the rebounded demand for their goods and services.
   4. War in Ukraine. The global disruption in gas and oil supply resulting from global sanctions on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine has been felt in most Western nations, including the United States. As a result, the worldwide supply of gasoline exceeded the supply and the price per gallon spiked.
   5. Foreign import tariffs. A tariff is a tax on imported goods. By making these goods more expensive, the demand for those goods drops and is replaced by demand for more expensive domestically-produced goods. In addition, tariffs can cause foreign manufacturers to redirect their sales to other countries that do not have tariffs in order to maximize their profits. As a result, the amount of foreign-produced goods falls and U.S. consumers pay more for a given item. Tariffs introduced by President Donald Trump resulted in a drop in supply of many foreign-produced goods.
   6. Low unemployment rates. The supply of services is often reflected in the unemployment rate. When the unemployment rate rises, there are too many workers competing for too few jobs and when the unemployment rate falls, there are too many jobs for too few workers causing employers to increase wages to attract workers. The pandemic resulted in many workers retiring early and also restricted the flow of immigrants and seasonal foreign workers into the United States thus shrinking the labor pool. Consequently, we now have too many job openings for too few workers, particularly for low wage jobs and farm workers.

3. Alterations in the expectation of inflation:

   1. Worker expectations. When workers think inflation is getting worse, they proactively demand increased wages. This was evidenced recently but the increase in unionization over the past year with the assumption that by unionizing, they could use collective bargaining to get pay raises.
   2. Manufacturer and employer expectations. Forecasts of inflation also affects the costs of goods and services – when companies forecast inflation in the near future, they increase the price of their goods and services in anticipation of increased costs to produce those goods and services in the future.
   3. Consumer expectations. The psychology of inflation is often discussed in terms of worker and employer expectations but consumer psychology is just as important. When consumers hear that inflation is going up, they come to believe that they should be paying more for goods and services. This can result in a mentality of: “Well, normally I’d never pay $25 for a pizza but inflation is happening so I guess it is OK to spend that much”.

How do we cure inflation?

With disease, we often focus too often on treating the symptoms rather than treating the underlying cause. Symptom-based treatments can provide transient relief but do not cure the underlying disease. You can give a patient with sepsis Tylenol and make his fever go away but he’ll still die of sepsis. Similarly, a disease with multiple causes requires treating all of the underlying causes and not just one. When a trauma patient is bleeding from 5 different gunshot wounds and you only suture one of them up, the patient will still bleed to death. Treating inflation is no different – you have to treat the underlying causes. Some of these treatments are relatively easy but others can be too politically painful to realistically implement.

Treating alterations in demand for goods and services:

1. Eliminate COVID relief spending. Much of this has already occurred but many state and local governments still have unspent federal COVID relief funds and they are looking for things to spend that money on. Unspent funds should be returned to the Federal government to prevent further cash injection into the economy.
2. Increase interest rates. The Federal Reserve is already addressing this by progressively increasing the federal fund rate. The downstream effect is rising mortgage rates and car loan rates that in turn reduce demand for new house construction and automobiles.
3. Raise income taxes. This is probably the single most effective way for the federal government to cool off inflation. It takes money out of worker’s pockets and thus reduces their demand for goods and services. However, increased taxes is viewed as a politically nuclear option and no elected official wants to go on record for voting for higher taxes. Even politicians who lean to the left usually only want to increase taxes on the wealthy. However, selectively increasing taxes on the wealthy can increase federal government revenues but has less effect on inflation. The wealthy tend to spend their extra income on investments and luxury goods but to really cool off inflation, one must decrease the demand for everyday goods. For that reason, for tax increases to be effective in reducing inflation, everyone would have to pay higher taxes, not just the wealthy.
4. Eliminate loan forgiveness programs. Unfortunately, once you promise people money, it is exceptionally difficult to then take it away – it would be political suicide. Nevertheless, even lowering the income threshold for loan forgiveness eligibility would effectively take cash out of the economy.
5. Decrease federal spending. Much of the huge spike in federal spending from 2020 – 2022 was on COVID programs such as vaccines, medications, and testing. The public health advocate in me wants to continue free access to vaccines and tests but to reduce inflation, it is better to start asking Americans to pay for these goods and services themselves. Belt-tightening inside the Washington Beltway is never popular but to fight inflation, federal spending should be limited to only those programs and federal departments that are vital to keep the country running safely.

Treating alterations in supply of goods and services:

1. Improve supply chain disruptions. Many of the COVID supply chain issues have been resolving over the past year as the country has gotten back to work. However, transportation bottlenecks still exist in some areas and union strikes could cause additional transportation disruptions in the near future.
2. Re-set consumer buying patterns. The free market is already doing this to an extent. Computer sales are falling as people return to the office after working from home. Netflix subscriptions are falling. Home sales are decreasing due to a combination of people no longer fleeing to the safety of the suburbs to avoid COVID, no longer needing more space to work from home, and no longer being able to buy houses with rock-bottom mortgage rates.
3. Temper COVID rebound spending. The government can’t just tell people to stop buying stuff. But fortunately, the combination of a year of high inflation plus a year of spending down COVID-related household cash reserves has already tempered America’s recent buying spree.
4. End the war in Ukraine. This one is not under the United States’ control but until the war ends, normalization of trade relations with Russia as well as resumption of Ukrainian agricultural and manufactured goods exports will continue to cause international inflationary pressure. In addition, Western countries, including the U.S., are spending much cash on military items with the downstream effect of that cash going into military production worker wages.
5. Lift foreign import tariffs. There are compelling political reasons to continue some tariffs but from an economic standpoint, the more inexpensive goods we get into the country, the better from an inflation standpoint. First, increased imports reduce the cash supply by getting U.S. cash out of the country and thus out of circulation in the U.S. economy. Second, increased imports keep the cost of American-made goods lower by increasing competition.
6. Increase the unemployment rate. It would be politically poisonous to simply eliminate jobs but if the unemployment rate increases, circulating cash is taken out of the economy as the supply of workers drops. In addition, employers would no longer have to keep increasing wages to attract workers. However, an alternative strategy could be more palatable, namely, increase the number of workers by increasing foreign immigration. We currently have too many foreigners trying to get into our country illegally in order to find employment and escape unsafe living conditions. By legalizing the presence of many of these undocumented foreigners, we can increase our workforce, particularly for lower wage jobs and farm work jobs. Our immigration problem and our low unemployment problem are the solutions to each other.

Treating alterations in inflation expectation:

1. Politicians as psychologists. Changing the psychology of an entire country is hard, but not impossible. This is where the charisma of individual leaders can have an impact. Another ways by having agreement between the political parties. Getting Republicans and Democrats to come together on  anything is hard anytime but even more so in an election year. During election years, it is far too easy for both parties to point the blame for inflation on each other. It is far to easy for a political party to say “Elect us because the other guys are going to make inflation worse”. Nevertheless, consensus on legislation portrayed as being inflation-reducing can send a powerful psychological signal that can help Americans of both parties.
2. Just do something. In medicine, doctors often prescribe antibiotics for bronchitis and sinusitis even though they know that the infection is most likely viral and the antibiotics won’t do anything. But it is the patients’ expectation that something is being done to cure their disease. If Americans see no-one doing anything to reduce inflation, their expectation will be that it is just going to keep on going until someone does something. Thus far, the public face on inflation control has been the Federal Reserve and to give the Fed credit, they have made aggressive interest rate increases. But ideally, there should also be executive branch action and legislative branch action to fight inflation so that our country’s perception is that war is being fought and will soon be won.

It really is like a disease

Admittedly, I am neither an economist nor a politician. But as a doctor, I see so many similarities between inflation and disease. In fact, inflation can be seen as a disease of the country’s economy. And just like most diseases, you can’t just treat the symptoms and hope that it goes away on its own, you have to treat the causes of the disease, preferably all of the causes.

October 19, 2022

At the time of writing this post, there are still 3 days to contribute to a 529 plan to take advantage of tax savings this year. So, if you haven’t maximized your annual contribution, now is the time to do so. For most families, life’s five biggest expenses are food, housing, healthcare, taxes, and children’s college education. The 529 plans uniquely allow you to lower your overall costs of two of these: your children’s education and your taxes. I funded all 4 of my children’s college costs through 529 plans and now I am looking at 529 plans for a grandchild.

What is a 529 plan? College is expensive. The average 4-year public college currently costs $102,640 and the average private college costs $215,796. Given the projected annual inflation in college costs, 18 year from now, a public university will cost $265,700 and a private college will cost $559,604. Financial aid and scholarships reduce these costs for most families but physicians generally have a high enough income that exempts them from financial aid and most scholarships. A 529 plan allows a parent (or grandparent or just about anyone) to put money into a 529 investment where it grows tax-free and when distributions are taken out for educational expenses, there is no tax on those distributions. These tax advantages make the 529 plans the absolutely best way to save money for a child’s college education. The account owner is usually a parent or grandparent; the account beneficiary is the child. If the account owner has several children/grandchildren in the 529 accounts that he/she owns, then residual funds in the account of one child can be rolled over into the account of another beneficiary after the first child completes their education. In addition to using 529 plans to pay for college, the money in a 529 plan can also be used to pay for K-12 tuition of up to $10,000 per year – this can be useful for children attending private elementary and secondary schools.

Each state has its own 529 plan. The 529 plans are state-specific and no two states’ plans are exactly alike. Most states will offer a variety of specific mutual funds within the 529 plan that you can choose from. Some states allow you to deduct contributions from your state income tax. Some states provide modest matching contributions. The annual expenses charged to the 529 account vary from state to state. The good news is that you do not need to live in a state to open a 529 plan in that state but the bad news is that tax deductions and matching contributions usually only apply when contributing to a 529 plan when you are a resident of that particular state. In general, the money in the 529 plans can be used for a college anywhere in the country and not just colleges located in the state administering the 529 plan.

Savings plans versus pre-paid tuition plans. Most 529 plans are savings plans that are essentially investment accounts that allow withdrawals for any education-related expenses (tuition, books, and room & board) for any college anywhere in the country. Five states currently also offer pre-paid tuition plans that allow the 529 contributions to purchase tuition for colleges in that state (Florida, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, and Nevada). This essentially allows you to lock in tuition purchases at today’s tuition prices and given how rapidly tuition costs have risen each year, there can be an attraction to the pre-paid tuition plans. I personally do not like the pre-paid tuition plans and even when Ohio did have a pre-paid tuition plan in the past, I avoided it. The reason is that if the child elects to go to a college in another state, the tuition credits cannot be used for out-of-state colleges. So, unless you live in one of the five states with pre-paid tuition plans AND your are 100% certain that your child will go to a public college in that state AND you are 100% certain that your child will not get a scholarship to attend that college, it is best to use a 529 savings plan rather than a 529 pre-paid tuition plan.

How to choose a 529 plan

Know whether your 529 plan contributions are tax-deductible. If the state that you live in offers a tax deduction (or a tax credit) from state income tax on contributions, then your state’s 529 plan is the one you should go with. Seven states even allow residents to deduct contributions made to 529 plans in other states (Arizona, Arkansas, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, and Pennsylvania). However, some states do not have state income tax and consequently there is no tax deduction advantage to residents of these states: Alaska, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Dakota Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming. Other states do have state income taxes but do not allow you to deduct 529 contributions: California, Delaware, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, New Jersey and North Carolina. For the rest of the states, the annual amount that is tax deductible varies from $500 ($1,000 if filing jointly) in Rhode Island to $20,000 ($30,000 if filing jointly) in Colorado. Here in Ohio, the amount that is tax deductible is $4,000 (regardless of whether filing single or jointly) but if you contribute to 529 accounts for multiple children, you can deduct contributions of up to $4,000 for each child from your Ohio state income taxes each year. If you live in a  state where there is no tax deduction, then you should base your 529 choice on the mutual fund options and annual expenses – this may mean investing in a 529 plan from a different state than the state that you live in.

Know what the fees are. There are many different fees that can be associated with each state’s 529 plan. In many cases, the amount of fees charged by the plan may be the deciding factor in selecting one state’s 529 plan over another state’s. Fees can include program management, maintenance, and administrative fees charged by the 529 plan itself. In addition, there will be investment fees charged by the mutual funds within the 529 plan. Many states offer “advisor-sold plans” where there is a company that actively manages the investment selections and charges additional advisor fees. All of these various fees can add up and can erode the value of the account if the fees are excessively high. The good news is that with different 529 plans in all 50 states plus the District of Columbia, competition between the states has helped to keep 529 fees down.

Know what the investment options are. Each 529 plan has multiple different mutual funds that you can select. These may include various stock funds, bond funds, age-based funds, advisor-directed accounts, certificates of deposit, and savings accounts. As a general rule, the younger a child is, the more aggressive option you should choose. As an example, a stock market index fund would be best for a 1-year old and a bond fund or certificate of deposit is preferable for a 17-year old. In 529 plans, I like the age-based funds because you can put money in the fund and then the investment company will automatically adjust the ratio of stocks:bonds each year based on the child’s age. Because of the lower expenses, I also prefer index funds over more costly advisor-directed funds.

Is there a match to contributions? In a few states, there is a small match to initial contributions for residents of that state. These can be an initial incentive to open new accounts. For example, Rhode Island will contribute $100 to 529 plans opened by Rhode Island residents for children before their first birthday. Illinois has a $50 contribution to new 529 plans for Illinois residents. In other states, a portion of initial contributions will be matched for low or middle income families. For example, California will match initial contributions up to $200 for California residents making less than $75,000 per year.

Where to get information. Start by checking with your state’s 529 plan website to learn whether contributions are tax-deductible, what the fees are, and what the investment options are. If you are in a state that does not allow you to deduct contributions from state income taxes, then you should compare different states’ 529 plans and chose one based on other factors, such as annual fees and mutual fund options. There are several good websites that allow you to compare 529 plans from different states, for example, savingforcollege.com and collegesavings.org. The 529 plans are constantly changing, so a plan that may be best for you one year may not be the best the next year. Forbes, Investopedia, and Morningstar rate 529 plans each year and these websites can provide useful recommendations.

What about grandparents?

For the past 3 decades, I based my 529  strategy based on the needs of my own children. Now that I am a grandfather, there are a number of other factors to consider when contributing to a 529 plan for a grandchild.

• A child can be the beneficiary of more than one 529 account. Most typically this will happen if a parent has a 529 plan and one or both sets of grandparents want to open their own 529 account for the child. Or, the parents are divorced and both want to have separate 529 plans for their child.
• If the 529 plan is in a state that considers contributions as tax-deductible, the grandparent can deduct contributions regardless of whether the 529 plan is owned by grandparent or owned by the parent (as long as the grandparent is a resident of that state).
• Since the state tax deduction usually only applies when a grandparent contributes to his/her state of residency’s 529 plan, it is best to open a second 529 plan if the child’s parents live in another state and have their own 529 plan in that state.
• A 529 account from one state can be transferred to a new 529 plan in a different state once per year. This can be an advantage if the 529 owner (parent or grandparent) moves from one state to another and wants to take advantage of state income tax deductions in the new state. It can also be an advantage if a different state’s 529 plan becomes more attractive due to lower expenses or better investment options.
• The amount of money in a 529 plan that a parent owns will affect a child’s eligibility for financial aid in the FAFSA application. However, the money in a 529 plan that a grandparent owns is not factored into financial aid calculations for FAFSA purposes until that money is withdrawn for the child’s education (at which time, it will be considered as part of the child’s non-taxable income on the FAFSA form). Therefore, the best strategy is to use the parent’s 529 account for the first two years of college (when financial aid applications from FAFSA will be submitted) and then use the grandparent’s 529 account for the child’s last two years (when the FAFSA forms have already been submitted). This strategy optimizes the child’s financial aid and scholarship eligibility.
• In most states, the ownership of a 529 plan can be transferred (for example, from a grandparent to a parent when the child gets close to college age).
• Contributions to 529 plans are considered as a gift for federal income tax purposes. Therefore, they are subject to the maximum of $15,000 per person that can be gifted to an individual per year without that person having to pay income tax on the gift. If the grandparents (or parents) are married and file jointly, then each grandparent (or parent) can gift $15,000 for a total of $30,000 from the 2 grandparents (or the 2 parents). A unique feature of 529 funding is that the IRS allows people to do a 5-year front load to the 529 fund without incurring gift taxes. So, a grandparent or parent can contribute $75,000 initially to the 529 plan and then not do any contributions for next 4 years. This can allow more money to grow tax-free with the result of a larger balance in the account when the child reaches college age.
• In addition to funding a 529 plan, grandparents can also pay tuition directly to the college once the grandchild is enrolled. A provision in the tax code exempts these direct tuition payments from the $15,000 per person per year gift limit ($30,000 if married and filing jointly). This is a strategy that parents often use to help pay for a child’s college expenses without exceeding the annual gift amount limit but it also applies to grandparents. For example, tuition at the University of Notre Dame (one of my children’s alma mater) is currently $58,843 per year. If a grandparent writes a check to a grandchild for that much money, the grandchild would have to pay income taxes for everything over $15,000 (in this case, that would be $43,843 of taxable income). On the other hand, if the grandparent pays the University of Notre Dame the $58,843 directly, then none of it appears as taxable income for the grandchild.

What I did

When 529 plans first came into existence, the Ohio plan was not very good – the mutual funds offered were expensive, the fund’s performance was poor, and the tax breaks were not attractive. So, I initially invested in Iowa’s 529 plan (at the time, I had never stepped foot in Iowa). The reason was that Iowa offered Vanguard index mutual funds with low expenses. When Ohio later changed to offer Vanguard funds and the tax deduction became more attractive, I moved my 529 fund from Iowa’s to Ohio’s. I selected age-based Vanguard index mutual funds for each of my four children and then did monthly direct deposits from my checking account into the Ohio 529 fund. By the time each child was in college, I had enough saved in their 529 accounts to pay for tuition, books, room & board for an in-state public university. When each of my children graduated from college, I rolled over the residual balance in their 529 account into one of my other children’s accounts. I am still using the residual fund balance in my youngest child’s 529 plan to help him out with his medical school costs.

For my new grandchild, I will open a new account in my Ohio 529 plan under my ownership to take advantage of the tax deduction on contributions to the plan. In the unlikely event that there is a residual balance in my son’s 529 account when he finishes medical school, I will roll that balance over to my grandchild’s account. If/when I have additional grandchildren, I will open new Ohio 529 accounts under my ownership for each of them so that if one of them gets a college scholarship or does not go to college, I can roll their fund balance over into one of the other grandchildren’s 529 accounts. I will likely hold off on taking distributions out of their 529 accounts until their junior and senior years of college in order to avoid negatively impacting their financial aid eligibility.

The time to act is now

This year, New Years Day falls on a Saturday so most state offices are closed on December 31st for a state holiday. Therefore, you have until December 30th to make contributions to a 529 plan this year in order to take advantage of a 2021 state tax deduction (if your state allows 529 contributions to be tax-deductible). Education is one of the best gifts that you can give to a child and 529 plans are the best way to invest in that education.

December 28, 2021

Forget about everything that you think you know about income tax brackets… they are one of the most misunderstood parts of the American tax system. How many times have you heard someone say “More income might push me into a higher tax bracket”? Yes, it will but no, you shouldn’t care in the least. The reason is that Federal income tax brackets are marginal tax brackets. Because of this no American pays income taxes at the tax rate of the bracket that they are in. Instead, we pay the effective tax rate which is always lower than the marginal tax bracket. The following table shows the current Federal income tax brackets.

Many people mistakenly think that their income tax rate is the same as whatever the tax bracket that their taxable income falls into. But that is not exactly correct. The marginal tax system results in everyone paying the same tax rate (10%) on the first $19,751 that they make. Then everyone pays the same tax rate (12%) on the next $60,500 that they make and so on up each tax bracket. The graph below illustrates how this works:

The result is that for any given taxable income a person earns, their federal income is a blend of the individual tax rates for each of the brackets that comprise their total income. In addition, each taxpayer can take the standard deduction from their gross income: $12,400 if filing single and $24,800 if married and filing jointly. The standard deduction results in everyone’s taxable income being lower than their total gross income. As a result, even people in the lowest income tax bracket pay a smaller effective tax rate than the marginal tax rate of that bracket. The next graph shows the current marginal tax brackets for Federal income tax in the dotted line and the effective tax rate in the solid line.

From this graph, you can see that the effective tax rate (what you actually pay) is always less than the tax bracket that you are in. It also shows that the effective tax rate does not jump up when your income increases enough to put you into a higher marginal tax bracket. Instead, the effective tax rate goes steadily up at a relatively constant rate for every dollar more you earn. Periodically, congress will set new tax brackets. The graphs below compare the 2016 and 2020 brackets.

As you can see, trying to figure out what those tax bracket changes mean for any one person at any given income is difficult. So, let’s look at how the 2020 brackets affect people at different incomes:

The above graph shows the tax brackets at the end of the Obama administration (blue) versus the tax brackets at the end of the Trump administration. Just looking at a tax bracket table can be hard to interpret – what is important is your effective tax rate and not the marginal tax bracket. The table below shows the effective tax rates during the two administrations:

The effective tax rate that taxpayers of every income dropped during the Trump administration. The reduction in effective tax rates was fairly consistent across all incomes, ranging from a drop of 3.7 to 5.9 percentage points. Some people focus on the top tax bracket (currently $622,051 and 37%). But as was demonstrated earlier in this post, no one pays an effective tax rate as high as their marginal tax bracket. So even a person with an extremely high gross income of $700,000 per year only pays an effective tax rate of 26.7%.

Tax rates go up and down with different administrations. Tax cuts are an enormous crowd-pleaser for voters. However, eventually, deficits catch up with tax cuts – the government cannot spend money on services that voters demand and then tax raises ensue. In general, taxes go up when Democratic presidents are in office and go down when Republican presidents are in office. The graph below shows the marginal tax rate for the highest tax bracket over the past 36 years:

So, don’t fear being in a higher income tax bracket. Indeed, you should try to be in as high of an income tax bracket as you can. But it does make retirement planning complicated. Let’s say you have an option of putting retirement savings in a regular 401(k) or a Roth 401(k) this year. If you put money in the regular 401(k), the money will be invested pre-tax and then you will pay regular income tax on the withdrawals when you take the money out in retirement. If you instead put money in a Roth 401(k), then you will pay income tax on the money now and then you will pay no tax on the withdrawals when you are retired.  The strategy is to pay income taxes when you have the lowest effective tax rate. The problem is that you cannot predict today what the effective tax rates are going to be when you retire.

As an example, assume you are making a taxable income of $150,000/year today. Your effective tax rate in 2021 is 14.1%. Now assume you will have a taxable income of $100,000/year when you retire. If tax rates are the same in your retirement year as they are now, then your effective tax rate will be 11.7% in retirement and so you would be better off putting your money in a regular 401(k) today to minimize your overall tax burden since your retirement income tax rate will be lower than your current income tax rate. However, if whoever is president when you retire goes back to the same tax rates we had in 2016, then that taxable income of $100,000/year in retirement will result in an effective tax rate of 15.6%. This would be higher than your current tax rate on your taxable income of $150,000 today of 14.1%. So, in that situation, you’d be better off putting your retirement investment in the Roth 401(k) since your tax rate will be higher in your retirement year.

No one has a crystal ball to predict the tax rates of the future. More than likely, they will go up some years and go down other years. So, should you put your retirement investment in a regular 401(k) or a Roth 401(k)? The best option is to do both and split your investment with half in a regular 401(k) and half in a Roth 401(k). When you are retired, if the effective tax rates go up one year, then take money out of your Roth 401(k) that year. On the other hand, if the effective tax rates go down the next year of your retirement, then take money out of the regular 401(k) that year. Your best defense against variable tax rates in your retirement years is a diversified portfolio that includes both the regular 401(k) and the Roth 401(k). If you work for a non-profit company, then the same goes for a regular 403(b) and a Roth 403(b). If your company does not offer the Roth 401(k)/403(b), then put some money in the regular 401(k)/403(b) and some money in a Roth IRA (depending on your income level, you may need to initially put money in a traditional IRA and then do a Roth IRA conversion to avoid penalties).

In a letter to Jean-Baptiste Le Roy, Benjamin Franklin famously wrote: “Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” I would add to that that the only thing certain about taxes is that the rates will be different in the future.

March 15, 2021