You're completely wrong. "The average physician's net income declined 7 percent from 1995 to 2003, after adjusting for inflation, while incomes of lawyers and o

You're completely wrong. "The average physician's net income declined 7 percent from 1995 to 2003, after adjusting for inflation, while incomes of lawyers and other professionals rose by 7 percent during the period." http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/business/22doctors.html http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/business/22doctors.html "...none of this really matters, because doctors' salaries aren't a large enough chunk of health care spending in the United States to make a difference. According to Reinhardt, doctors' net take-home pay (that is, income minus expenses) amounts to only about 10 percent of overall health care spending. So if you cut that by 10 percent in the name of cost savings, you'd only save about $26 billion. That's a drop in the ocean compared with overhead for insurance companies, billing expenses for doctors' offices, and advertising for drug companies. The real savings in health care will come from these expenses." http://www.slate.com/id/2227965/ http://www.slate.com/id/2227965/ Interesting data, but the question is if licensing scarcity increase salaries than without. The salary decrease in 1995 to 2003 doesn't tell us anything other than.....net income decrease. The rest of your comment is incorrect as well. The AMA does not license physicians, state governments do. Many physicians don't even belong to the AMA. The AMA lobbies for physicians, but it's not in any way like a union (not that there's anything wrong with unions). Would it be possible that AMA effectively limits licensing rate through their lobbying? There is a reason for (some) licensing. We tried the adolescent libertarian fantasy of letting the "free market" drive things like medical training and licensure back in the early days of the 20th century. You could characterize the vast majority of medical education in that era as training in quackery, before people like Abraham Flexner got involved: Interesting data, but not enough details to support your statement. We need more details on what kind of reforms were made, privately or governmental.