Yeah, my dad, a family practice physician for 20 years, would confirm this. His monthly overhead costs (in a tightly run physicians' group) are mind blowing an

Yeah, my dad, a family practice physician for 20 years, would confirm this. His monthly overhead costs (in a tightly run physicians' group) are mind blowing and he has working hours and a sleep schedule that would stupify this 25 year old. He could work a quarter of the hours and make more money just doing ER work, but feels an obligation to his patient base. But there are many other doctors making that choice or choosing lucrative niche specialties, and who can blame them? There's almost no economic and lifestyle incentive to become a general practitioner anymore. Also, any time you have a complicated system that no one believes in, people are going to try to game it. So you have some doctors billing Medicare these huge sums for a patient coming in with a runny nose, and this further discourages the honest doctors.