[outlace]

You're correct that doctors' salaries are not the biggest source of excessive health expenditure compared to other countries. But the article is right that medicine (i.e. physicians) behaves like a cartel in that it places rules to limit supply and force salaries upward, even though there's no legitimate reason for this based on safety or otherwise.

Your local family doc has nothing to do with this, but there must be some powerful interest groups involved (at least historically) to make this the case. So it's actually that NON-libertarian forces (i.e. illegitimate regulations) are increasing physician salaries. If we had more of a free labor market for physicians, salaries would fall.

[byebyetech]

One of the force driving salaries up is strict control of immigrant doctors. Its is million times harder to qualify to work in US as a doctor compared to immigrant software engineer.

[nemo44x]

It's a huge issue in my opinion. Doctors who learn in Europe simply can't work here unless they get qualified in the state they want to work in, which is a waste. You see doctors from India and various other Asian countries because it's worth their effort to do so. But the USA should open it up to doctors from other countries to more easily work here. Simply passing a "Certification" or something should suffice.