Doing a direct comparison of remuneration across different countries is tricky because the same salary may allow for different standards of living in different places. These numbers are in the second, fourth and sixth columns of the chart. They show that American general practitioners and nurses earn doctirs than their counterparts in other developed countries, and American specialists are close to the top of the monney. These numbers are in the third column, fifth and seventh columns of the chart. But even accounting for this trend, the United States pays doctors more than its wealth would predict:. In other words, doctors and nurses in the rest of the industrialized world start their medical careers with much less student loan debt compared to medical graduates in the United States. For more data on health spending in O. For a recent American-only survey on the pay of physicians with various specialties, go .