Doctor’s reimbursement has gone down 350% since 1990. Costs, including overhead of course, have gone up like costs for everything else. Who do you think is pocketing all that medical spending dollars that is a huge chunk of GNP?
No one smart enough and hard working enough to be a doctor would now want to become a doctor. Of course the field is now flooded by women. Medicine is become like teaching and social work - low paying burn out fields with long vacations. (see France during the summer heat of 2003 when 15,000 died). Just try to get any doctor including your own to see you on a weekend or holiday.
We may as well have socialized medicine.
Women will soon dominate in medicine--they make up over half of med school students now. There are, of course, a few female subspeciaty surgeons--but typically women choose the less physically demanding specialties and not the ortho or neuro. Once again, the dangerous shortage of trauma surgeons.
Women also design medical careers with a family in mind--working fewer hours and accepting less pay and prestige. And not a few marry doctors and never practice medicine at all.
Every indication is that we will have fewer docs working fewer hours as we get older--and the boomer docs will begin their retirements shortly.
Remember the smug assertion by those envious of the perceived privileges of doctors about the "coming doctor glut"? And Hillary managed to shut down the building of a few new medical schools.