What I've been reading says that in my state psychatrists average about $185,000 per year. My state is one that is really in trouble with a large shortage of both psychiatrists and beds (some of you may remember my pathetic posts from my 30 hours waiting for a bed while stuck in the psych ER in August) when every bed in the system was full.

Is your psychiatrist one who doesn't accept insurance? Those are the doctors who are really making a big profit I think. Just the time that they don't spend dealing with paperwork makes them much more profitable. I know that the psychiatrist who left the job that has created such a backlog that I can't get into the hospital left for a job without government insurance and I think he was sick of it. Honestly I don't understand that completely; I dealt with Medicare, Medicaid and private insurances for my entire career and plain Medicare was easier because they had fewer demands for paperwork for most things. Medicaid didn't demand a lot of paperwork for most things but limited payment so much that most employers limited how much treatment we could provide which was wrong. Private insurers were the ones who tried to control everything. I once had a nurse from a private insurer yell at me because my evaluation report didn't make sense to her. It was written in medical terminology with rehabilitation wording. I was a rehab therapist and she was a nurse responsible for assigning rehab benefits. I was always a little afraid of that insurer after that.....