I know a wide variety of docs, many of them are my customers. Specialty surgeons are not hurting... although it's coming for them too. Most specialty surgeons have been doing quite well for the last 15-20 years. Many of my customers, have 3 or 4 vacation homes.

GPs, Family Docs, OBGYNs and certain other types of docs have been getting crunched for years and most are ready to throw the towel in.

Given that, I don't think we can make a blanket statement one way or the other that doctors are under paid or over paid. Some are and some aren't. I have 5 anesthesiologist for customers. They have insane malpractice insurance, but I can tell you from their lifestyles and personal assets, they are all living quite well, in spite of their high insurance. I suspect the bubble is about to burst, even for specialty docs very soon. A systemic correction is coming, O'Care or not, and whenever there is a bubble burst correction, there is unfair collateral damage and carnage along with it (think Wall Street 5 years ago). GPs have been getting unfairly hammered for several years and I don't think their undeserved punishment is yet over.

When the system has been screwed up for so long, there is enough punishment to go around, and the American people are getting their just deserts for failing to allow anything to be done about it, idly sitting by and allowing Big Pharma, Insurance, bloated multi conglomerate hospital systems (and even the federal gov't to some extent) to siphon from our pocket books and running the system into the gutter.

It's a big pile of money, and whenever you have a big pile of money, it's going to attract a lot of capitalistic self interest, system be damned.

Our country has the most expensive health care system in the world, not even a close comparison. It is not the even in the top 5 of quality of service (I'd have to look it up but I don't think it's even in the top 20), no matter what metrics you use to rank it. That's what unbridled, free market capitalistic health care can get you!

But again, most of the onus falls on us. As a majority, we refuse to eat proper, we refuse to exercise, we think taking a pill should solve all our problems (playing right into Pharma's plot), fast food places are freaking everywhere, corn subsidies are running the food supply, diabetes and obesity is rampant, and on, and on, and on.

And the doc is right, we spend way too much money on the last 6 months of life. Yet the conservatives keep harping abut "death panels". I suspect if the system asked the family to pay out of pocket for the last 6 months of life, most families would start believing in euthanasia. We treat our dogs better than we treat our own family members.