Celebrities and Athletes: Salaries and Finances

Understanding the pay infrastructure of the medical industry is no easy task! There are a lot of moving parts to payroll in the medical world, and often, workers are siloed into specific areas that do not have much overlap. Money, medicine, and insurance are a messy world for outsiders to understand. A few years ago, the nonprofit media organization ProPublica developed a database where patients can look up their doctors to see if they have been paid by pharmaceutical or medical device companies. All of this data comes from federally mandated reporting of information that doctors have to provide.

Some doctors in the database have received nothing at all, or perhaps $10 or $20 here and there as reimbursement for “promotional talks, research, and consulting, among other categories.” However, there were medical providers like Dr. Stephen Burkhart, an orthopedic surgeon, who has made $65.3 million through partnerships with pharmaceutical companies.

This made us wonder, is being a doctor sort of like being a famous athlete, who gets paid not just for doing their job but also sponsorships, partnerships, and endorsements?

Ultimately, we’ve learned that no, being a doctor isn’t like being an elite athlete. The salaries of athletes vary drastically from year to year, and much of their pay comes from contracts that value certain accomplishments (namely: wins!) over simply getting the job done.  On the contrary, most doctors’ main income comes from their fairly stable salaries, not from speaking engagements or research partnerships.

However, understanding how the money you pay for medical care turns into a doctor’s salary is an interesting process! Let’s look at how doctors in America get paid.

What determines a doctor’s salary?

Working in the United States is already the best way to ensure the highest potential salary for a doctor. Here in the US, we pay our doctors more than anywhere else in the world. In fact, we pay nearly double what most other similar economies pay their medical providers.

There are a lot of reasons for this, with some healthcare experts arguing that it has to do with the way that the supply of doctors is limited by medical associations. Economist Yarek Waszul writes that “the supply of doctors is tightly controlled by the number of medical school slots, and more importantly, the number of medical residencies. Those are both set by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, a body dominated by physicians’ organizations. The United States, unlike other countries, requires physicians to complete a U.S. residency program to practice. This means that U.S. doctors get to legally limit their competition. As a result, U.S. doctors receive higher pay.”

Waszul argues that high salaries for doctors are part of the problem of high medical costs for Americans, but Gary Price, MD, and Tim Norbeck wrote a rebuttal for Forbes that argues the following:

• The way to measure the fairness of a doctor’s pay is by looking at what other careers the individual doctor could have pursued; if the person could have made just as much money by going into another high paying job like being a lawyer or being a Wall Street investor, then that person deserves equally high pay as a doctor.
• Only 20% of patient medical spending goes to doctors’ salaries.
• Many Americans do not see it as a problem for doctors to be paid very high salaries.

What are these salaries, anyway? The mean salary for medical doctors in the United States is $294,000, although specialists tend to be paid significantly more than primary care physicians and general practitioners.

Salaries for doctors tend to be affected by the same things that affect salaries for other industries: location, education, specialty level, experience, and demand.

What is the difference in pay between independent providers and those affiliated with a network?

In 2016, a survey of medical providers showed that only 32% of 16,000 owned an independent practice. This was down from 48% of the respondents in 2012. Network-employed doctors do not have as much freedom as their colleagues who are independently employed, but they also have more job security.

A medical provider in a network does not have to compete as much for patients, and there is more flexibility in lateral moves within the network and opportunities to “climb the ladder.” Independent providers get to make more decisions about their practice, schedules, employees, and insurance plans.

With all other factors being equal, independent doctors get paid more than their salaried, group-employed colleagues. This is because they get a larger share of the practice’s earnings. However, doctors who own their own practices often have to work longer hours in order to see enough patients to make their offices profitable.

For doctors who have families, children, or important social and community commitments, this can be an unlivable arrangement. That is part of the reason why doctors are moving towards salaried employment with a hospital, network, or group.

How does Medicare participation affect a doctor’s salary?

Doctors can decide whether or not to participate in Medicare. According to Medicare Resources, “Physicians who agree to fully accept the rates set by Medicare are referred to as participating providers. They accept Medicare’s reimbursements for all Medicare-covered services, for all Medicare patients, and bill Medicare directly for covered services. Most eligible providers are in this category.

A Kaiser Family Foundation analysis found that 93 percent of non-pediatric primary care physicians were participating providers with Medicare in 2015, but only 72 percent were accepting new Medicare patients.”

Medicare involvement does affect a doctor’s income, because Medicare reimburses at a lower rate for medical care than for-profit insurance companies. If your doctor accepts Medicare, that means that she or he is willing to work for a lower rate in order to serve lower-income patients.

What about unconventional doctors who don’t take insurance?

There is one other category we need to look at: cash-only doctors.

These providers do not work with medical insurers at all. Instead, they bill the patient directly and do not accept any insurance reimbursements or plans. One such doctor is Carmela Mancini, who told Healthline, ““The main benefit of not billing through insurance is that you no longer work for the insurance company. You work directly for the patient.”

This kind of care, often called “direct care” or “direct primary care,” is nowhere near as popular as dealing with traditional insurers. According to Healthline, these providers tend to work with 800-1000 patients per practice, in contrast to traditional primary care practices that have 2000-3000 patients.

Direct primary care providers offer monthly fees for their services, or membership plans. If this is in place of insurance, the fees are typically lower than insurance costs. However, many individuals still carry insurance, even if they have a direct primary care doctor, because they need coverage for lab tests, specialist visits, medications, and more.

Doctor pay is complex

 Doctors’ salaries are complex, and they are influenced by everything from where they live and work, what their specialty is, whether or not they accept Medicare, their status as a network or independent provider, and the decisions they make based on what they value and how they want to practice medicine.

Before you sign up to deliver food on UberEATS, it’s important to understand the financial side of the business and how your paycheck will be affected by the fees you have to pay and the tips you get from customers. Let’s take a look at some of these factors that can influence your earnings as an UberEATS driver.

At Complete Payroll, we make it our priority to answer questions like these to help educate our clients; so if you would like the facts regarding UberEATS, read on!

What is UberEATS?

UberEATs is Uber's new food delivery platform that makes getting food from local restaurants as easy as clicking a button. With UberEATS customers can choose any menu item from a restaurant and drivers pick up food at the restaurant and bring the food to customers. Uber refers to UberEATS drivers as “delivery partners”. They aren’t technically employees of the company, they're contractors who are paid a contract fee depending on how many deliveries they've made.

Driver Requirements

To drive for UberEATS you must:

1. Be 19 years old or older
2. Have a 2 or 4-door car, motor scooter or bicycle 
3. Have a valid driver’s license, insurance, and proof of vehicle registration
4. Submit your social security number for a background screening

Earnings per trip

According to Gridwise, the average delivery driver makes $15.84 per hour, or $9.37 per trip. But, drivers can simply do their own calculations to determine their hourly rate by factoring in how many deliveries they expect to make per hour. 

Payment distribution

How are UberEATS drivers paid and how much of the total payment do they take home? UberEATS drivers are paid for each delivery based on a pickup fee, drop-off fee, and mileage fee. Below is a simple formula that can be used to calculate how much an UberEATS driver will make per ride.

An example of take home pay using Los Angeles rates: $2.50 pickup + $0.60  mileage (3 miles at $0.20/mile) + $3.00 drop off fee = $6.10. Minus Uber’s 25% fee ( $1.52) , total payout is $4.58. 

When is UberEATS available?

UberEATS is subject to the operating hours of the restaurants in their partnership. Therefore, UberEATS can be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in very busy cities like New York City.  However,  to make the maximum pay as an UberEATS driver you need to work during the “Promotion Boost” hours.  Pay can vary quite a bit from day to day and hour to hour, so working during the dinner and lunch rush hours or “Promotion Boost” hours will allow you to earn on the higher end of the pay scale. “Promotion Boost” works like surge pricing for Uber. Depending on time and location, drivers will receive extra pay, as a way of encouraging additional riders onto the roads.

Where in New York is UberEATS available?

UberEATS is currently available in all over the state of New York.

What restaurants can you order from? Restaurant selection varies by delivery location. Open the app to see the restaurants delivering directly to you, and check back as we continue to add new restaurants weekly.

Downsides?

To reduce delivery times, the UberEATS payment structure is designed to encourage the maximum amount of drivers on to the road as possible. However, UberEATS drivers have been undergoing a huge pay cut so less drivers feel encouraged to deliver; increasing the wait time per order.  The pay for UberEATS can go below $10/hour, even lower because there is no minimum.  Other drawbacks for driving for UberEATS include, traffic, parking and long restaurant waits.

Way back in 1926, “The Galloping Ghost” Red Grange signed a contract with the Chicago Bears that earned him $100,000 for the season, which lasted for 67 days. This was in a time when most players were given $100 per game, and many credit Grange with legitimizing the sport of football. Grange paved the way for the NFL to become a major force the American sports industry.

These days, people often talk about the huge salaries that are earned by NFL superstars. Those conversations reflect a pretty basic truth: there are a lot of super rich NFL stars! However, Grange shows us that this isn’t a new conversation at all. Football’s most competitive and beloved players have been making a ton of money for nearly a century.

Need some examples? Just look at the top 10 salaries for NFL players in the 2022 season:

10. Jared Goff, Detroit Lions, $33.5 million

8. Kirk Cousins, Minnesota Vikings, $35 million

   Russel Wilson, Denver Broncos, $35 million

6. Dak Prescott, Dallas Stars, $40 million

   Matthew Stafford, Los Angeles Rams, $40 million

5. Derek Carr, Las Vegas Raiders, $40.5 million

4. Josh Allen, Buffalo Bills, $43 million

3. Patrick Mahomes, Kansas City Chiefs, $45 million

2. Deshaun Watson, Cleveland Browns, $46 million

1. Aaron Rogers, Green Bay Packers, $50.3 million

And those are just the salaries! Players also get signing bonuses, roster bonuses, workout bonuses, and option bonuses. When you add in endorsement deals, the total take-home of the NFL’s biggest stars is pretty impressive. A lot of kids dream of making it big in the NFL, and the salary is part of that dream. High school and college athletes alike aspire to be signed to a pro team so that they can play professionally and get paid for it.

What About Everybody Else?

But what about the average NFL player’s pay and bonuses? How does the salary of a professional football player who isn’t a huge star compare to these big names?

The NFL’s Collective Bargaining Agreement that went into effect in 2020 will remain the governing document for team salaries until 2030. It sets a one-year contract for a rookie active roster player at $705,000.

According to CNBC, every year that they are on the roster and active, players are guaranteed an increase in their pay. The maximum annual increase in each of the four years of a deal is 25% of the first year cap number. That’s great news for those lucky enough to last that long in the NFL, but many won’t ring in a fourth year on the job. The average career length is less than three years, meaning most players never advance beyond the lower rungs of that payment ladder.”

Back in 2018, the LA Times ran a series debunking NFL myths. One of those myths was that everyone in the NFL is “rich.” They argued that even though the “average” salary for NFL players is $2.7 million, those major player salaries that are in the $20-30 million range inflate the average to misrepresent what ordinary pro players make.

LA Times journalist Gary Klein writes, “The NFL salary cap in the 2018 season was $167 million, divided among 53 players. If the salaries were divided evenly, that would be $3.2 million per player. The Patriots roster features three players with salary-cap numbers of $10.9 million or more. Three players earned between $6 million and $8.5 million, eight made $3 million to $5 million and 17 earned between $1 million and $3 million. Twenty-one were paid less than $1 million.”

Are the Risks the Same for All Players?

Being an NFL superstar means you have fame, long-term money-making potential, and celebrity status. However, some argue that the “average” player may be taking on a lot more risks than their more famous teammates, and for much less payoff.

Most NFL players only stay in the league for an average of 3 years. That means that young players start their careers at 22 or 23 years old and are likely to retire well before they are 30. That $705,000 starting salary sounds pretty great, but when you only have about three years of earning potential in your career, the cost/benefit analysis changes pretty significantly!

Many retired NFL players have discussed the difficulty of finding work, supporting their families, and funding their medical expenses in the years after the end of their short careers. Although there are definitely a lot of retired players who find successful careers, there is an undeniable financial strain on retired players. In fact, in 2009, there was a report that 78% of retired players declared bankruptcy or went through significant financial stress.

Every day that they practice or play, NFL players risk concussions and Traumatic Brain Injuries, as well as other injuries. Zach Binney from Football Outsiders conducted an analysis of NFL data, and he recently looked into some of the injury risks for players. He argues, “NFL injuries are complicated and difficult to predict. We've shown that a player's team, coach, and even the stadium he's playing in combine with his own injury proneness and a healthy dose of luck to determine whether he makes it through the week.”

He also questions the statistics that have been touted by the NFL that quarterbacks are experiencing fewer significant injuries than in previous years and argues that players are still being injured at similar rates, even if the numbers are calculated differently from year to year.

What does it all mean?

Ultimately, it is hard to determine who the “average” NFL player is. The only people who can really say whether or not the pay justifies the risks are the ones making that decision. Clearly, there is no shortage of athletes working hard to get drafted into the NFL, and plenty of people who would love the chance to play football for over a half-million dollars a year.

Still, when we hear people talk about all the money that is made by NFL players, it is probably a good idea to remember that there are a lot of players who aren’t becoming millionaires and that there are a lot of risks to playing one of America’s most beloved sports.

As a payroll company, we're constantly fascinated by unique aspects of compensation, especially in high-profile industries. Ever been curious about the earnings of your beloved television stars? Let's unravel the mysteries behind their salaries. Here, we present the top 5 highest-paid TV actors for a single episode, enriched with intriguing details.

1. Chris Pratt

Show: The Terminal List

Character: James Reece

Salary per Episode: $1.4 million

Years: 2022-2023

2. Elizabeth Moss

Show: The Handmaid's Tale

Character: June Osborne

Salary per Episode: $1 million

Years: 2021-2022

3. tie: Reese Witherspoon & Jennifer Aniston

Show: The Morning Show

Characters: Bradley Jackson & Alex Levy

Salary per Episode: $2 million (combined)

Years: 2021-2022

4. Norman Reedus

Show: The Walking Dead

Character Played: Daryl Dixon

Salary per Episode: $1 million

Years: 2022-2023

5. Dwayne Johnson

Show: Young Rock

Character Played: Himself

Salary per Episode: $650,000

Years: 2022-2023

Other interesting facts

Syndication

Several of these shows, like "The Morning Show" and "The Handmaid's Tale," have potential for syndication. Whenever these episodes air, the actors earn royalties. For instance, the income that Elizabeth Moss could amass from syndication is projected to be astronomical.

Lucrative Exits

In 2022, Chris Pratt emerged as the top-earning actor. His role in "The Terminal List" contributed significantly to his estimated net worth of $100 million in 2022. Interestingly, he was even paid to vacate his spot on "Guardians of the Galaxy" in 2022, with a contract buyout reported to be worth $50 million.

Persistence Wins

Most of these stars didn't begin their careers earning such staggering per-episode rates. Their income gradually increased over their career span. For instance, in 2011, Dwayne Johnson made just $150,000 per episode of "Ballers."

Conclusion

Whoever is balancing these stars' payrolls has a lot of work to do! Complete Payroll likes to leave our valued clients with some quirky yet useful information to chew on during their busy days.

All in all, every aspect of life can relate back to the business we do. Hopefully, these interesting facts cross your mind while you unwind at the end of the day to watch your favorite Primetime T.V. Shows.

Millions of Americans tune in to watch the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show in December every year. The production of a fashion show of this magnitude includes a significant number of paychecks being cut. So, we decided to take a deeper look into the salary and pay data of everything “Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show”. From the highest paid supermodels, to the supporting staff/production team, we’ve uncovered it all!

Average model salary

Victoria’s Secret Models are among the highest paid models in the world. These women make anywhere between $100,000-$1,000,000 a year, on average. However, the paychecks increase due to seniority and fame. Some of the most experienced models, like Gisele Bundchen and Adriana Lima, earn significantly more.

Highest paid (senior angels)

Let’s dive into the payrolls of the top 10 highest paid Victoria’s Secret Models, starting with those that receive the largest paychecks. It is important to remember that the salaries of these models are not solely from their appearance in the annual fashion show, but also from their outside fashion endorsement deals. Evidence proves that Victoria’s Secret may be turning into a supermodel launch pad to fame. The idea is for models to build their brand, increase their fame, and fatten their paychecks through endorsements and other opportunities.

Gisele Bundchen is the highest paid Victoria’s Secret model of all time. Bundchen earned an estimated $44 million in 2015 alone and has an outside deal with Under Armour. She has an estimated net worth of $386 million. Following Bundchen, we have Adriana Lima with a $9 million annual salary. Lima also has an endorsement deal with Maybelline. Doutzen Kroes is next with an annual salary of $7.5 million. Alessandra Ambrosio makes $5 million a year and has her own swim line called “Ale by Alessandra Ambrosio”. Candice Swanepoel and Karlie Kloss, also make $5 million a year.

Lower paid (newcomer angels)

The Angels bringing in the least amount of money yearly are often newcomers. Kendall Jenner, the face of Calvin Klein and Vogue, brings in about $4 million a year from her modeling career. Gigi Hadid works externally from Victoria’s Secret with CoverGirl and makes about $2.5 million annually. Lily Aldridge and Martha Hunt end off the list with $2 million each in annual earnings.

Show production

Victoria’s Secret President and CEO Sharen Turney, has disclosed that the fashion show costs an estimate of $22 million up to date. The production of the show costs about $12 million, whereas the promotion for the show is about a $10 million expense. “It’s not as much as you would think and it actually pays for itself five times over”, Turney explains. Part of the shows recuperation costs even occur during the show. With the millions of viewers tuning in to the show, CBS pays Victoria’s Secret over $1 million for the licensing of the show. Don’t forget about the commercials! Reports say that some 30-second ads cost $200,000.

Total paychecks?

The Victoria's Secret Fashion show is a massive/complex production and hundreds of paychecks get cut for each contribution. The total $12 million production cost is divvied up multiple times and trickles down into the deserving pockets. First you have the costs for the venue, staff and equipment. Victoria's Secret also has to pay the world’s best makeup artists, hair stylists, dressers, assistants, event coordinators, and security. You also have the costs of the performers that grace the stage each year alongside the Victoria’s Secret models (this year’s show includes Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars and The Weekend).

Other interesting (at least to us) facts...

• The “Million Dollar Bras” seen on the runway are actually worth millions! The Victoria’s Secret Fantasy Bras are set in 18 karat gold, 16,000 gemstones and have diamonds, rubies and sapphires. They are usually valued at $2,000,000 each.

• In 2000, Gisele Bundchen wore a bra with a $15 million price tag, which earned a place in the Guinness World Records as the most expensive item of lingerie ever created.

• Victoria’s Secret spends about $220 million a year on catalogs sent to customers.

• A majority of the Victoria's Secret payroll comes from their remarkably high seasonal sales during and following the fashion show. One-third of Victoria’s Secret’s highly-seasonal sales occur in the fourth quarter, which is the most profitable quarter. All in all, the marketing that comes from the show purposely overlaps with holiday sales.

• Victoria’s Secret revenue for the fiscal year ended January 31st 2015 was nearly $7.2 billion, with a $1.2 billion profit. Sales are trending upward: Estimates say this year’s revenue will be around $7.6 billion.  

• So who exactly is Victoria after all? The Victoria’s Secret brand is named after Queen Victoria, England's 19th century monarch.