But why pay the doctor less than the hospital for the same treatment? The doctors can figure out themselves whether it makes more sense from a cost perspective to join a hospital, a clinic, or to remain independent.
Perhaps, but why is there an attitude that doctors are evil and that all of them are so well off that we shouldn't care what happens? Seems to me that's the prevailing attitude. They're continually getting pinched: Tens of thousands for malpractice insurance. Hundreds of thousands in debt just to get to the point where they can practice. Seems reasonable if you have a good upside, but that upside keeps getting pressed on. I don't see how that can continue without serious reform in the other direction (tort limits and forgiveness of student debt for medical school)
I think its rather lucrative and a secure way to make big bucks. If you can memorize and work hard you can succeed. In many fields you need talent, especially to reach the 200k level.
> They're continually getting pinched: Tens of thousands for malpractice insurance.
Incidentally, the hospitals' liability cap is several orders of magnitude lower than doctors' in many cases (tens of thousands vs. millions). This makes no sense when you take into account the fact that the hospitals, not the doctors, are often the ones setting policies as to which procedures will or won't be done in response to a different result on a test, etc.
So, the hospitals get to set policies to keep their costs low, shielded by the benefit of a ridiculously low (corporate) liability cap, shifting the liability instead to the doctors who will be performing the operations, at significant (personal) liability and for a significantly lower payment than what the hospitals receive.
By that reasoning, we should work to close small independent stores because it's more efficient to deliver and retrieve products to one central location like Walmart.