So Im watching House, and he makes the ubiquitous joke ‘that’s why I get the big salary’
So, if it were the real world, how much would he be making? Do hospitals actually have a specific diagnostician [and maybe team] on staff?
Whatever he is making isn’t near enough since he has to pay for housing in the Princeton area and New Jersey rates for motorcycle insurance.
Well, according to salary.com an Internal Medicine Physician in Princeton, NJ would make a median salary of about $200,000. Since House is surely not median, I think we can safely use the 90th percentile number of $250,000 as a bare minimum. Considering he’s not really a Medicine Physician but something more akin to a ID/Critical Care/Pathology doc, he’s actually probably closer to $350-400k.
He is definitely not spending that much. He lives in a tiny apartment (221B), dresses very shabbily, and doesn’t seem to do anything except for buying old records and betting on the ponies. Hell, he gets his Vicodan and medical care for free.
WOW :eek:
I have trouble imagining making an income in the mid to upper 6 figures …
Of course I’d love to … 
He’s far enough out of medical school that he probably (?) has his medical school loans paid off by now. I’m just hoping that the hospital foots the bill for his malpractice insurance - some doctors in private practice in high-premiums professions like OB/GYN or neurosurgery end up being driven out of practice because their malpractice insurance payments quite literally eat up most of their salary.
What kind of an institution is that hospital? If it’s a state or county-funded public facility, I’ll bet he doesn’t make half that.
Someone who watches the show regularly can correct me but I saw an episode in passing once and some hospital administrative person told House that they only hired him because he was cheap and he was only cheap because no other hospital wanted him due to his… quirks.
So whatever he’s making it’s less than he could be making.
I’m pretty sure it’s a university (Princeton?) teaching hospital.
It appears to me that his biggest personal budget item is female companionship. That would certainly drain a bank account in no time.
True, I wasn’t considering House’s shall-we-say “employability”. Also, Princeton-Plainsboro is supposed to be a teaching hospital, so their salaries are almost certainly lower than a private hospital would be. You would also have to think that he has outrageous malpractice insurance premiums, and even if the hospital pays surely they pay him less because of it. So, I’ll revise my estimate to $250k.
Yes, but he is living like someone in the area who has a salary of about $50K.
On many occasions both House and Wilson have unquestioningly incurred costs and cut checks for rather large amounts.
And at least in the first couple of series I remember the doctors casually making and paying off $100 bets.
These practices suggest to me a considerable amount of disposable income, whether it comes from a large income or economizing elsewhere.
And he’s not just a doc, but would be something akin to a department head, I think. He has department budgets he’s supposed to prepare, as they showed last night. I don’t know what they’d make, but it’s surely more than one of the ducklings. And Taub doesn’t seem to be broke.
StG
Rent on an apartment like that would be cheap compared to a lot of Princeton properties. It would still be enough to choke someone from another part of the country.
I work in New Jersey real estate and rental property management. Tell me something I don’t know.
It was mentioned that House has lived in that same apartment since he was in med school, which was probably ten years ago. Figuring in rent control on a three room apartment, he is probably paying around $600-$750 monthly rent, which is not a lot in that area. Some people in the area would probably be willing to kill him if they could get that apartment at that rent.
But Taub was in plastics previously, wasn’t he? Or was that Kutner?
Yes, Taub. He was a partner in private practice. He likely took a major cut in pay to come work under House.
That’s odd, because he had a different apartment in the first season.
Maybe he was house-sitting, or something.
House’s apartment shape-shifts more than Gryffindor’s dorm.
House is constantly borrowing money from Wilson, and it’s implied that he rarely actually pays him back. It’s not clear whether this is actually due to House being broke or just seeing how far he can push Wilson financially.
House also has considerable… extra-legal income. At one point he receives a classic car as a “gift” from a mobster. He blackmails other doctors all the time. It’s pretty clear that he could pull in quite a bit as a conman, but he’s not actually interested in the money, just the manipulation.