>>Who says they have to stay in the voodoo business? They can go out and get real jobs and let the minimum wage immigrants have a larger share of the toenail-clipping business.

That's probably true of the apocryphal toenail-clipping physicians you describe, but do you seriously extrapolate that across healthcare? The good news for you ought to be that US physicians are abandoning private practice, either emigrating abroad (something you almost never saw of US physicians a decade ago) or gravitating to employee status. Before long you will enjoy the privilege of making an appointment not with your choice of physician, but with a hospital clinic or practice to be seen by whatever physician is "on" that day. She will be a wage earner who will go home at 5pm and not dirty her refined medical mind with discussions of money, since she has nothing to do with that side of things.

>>But where did that notion come from? Have you watched the big Pharma ads on TV lately?
>>Guess who prescribes that stuff?

Sheesh Bill- ask yourself why big pharma is advertizing to the general public rather than only to physicians if physicians are the ones generating the demand.

In fairness, check this out: http://media.mlive.com/news/detroit_impact/other/fata%20complaint.pdf Wow, a seriously bad apple physician who ought to be jailed- but please consider it as a rare enough event that it still makes news, including description of him as "Dr Evil." The big question though, is who will be gate-keeper for expensive therapies if not physicians? Will you be satisfied if the incomes of waged physicians are independent of the treatments they prescribe?

>>No, but I saw my mother and my late wife through the last years of their lives.
>>I spent much of my time refusing tests and "therapies" that were recommended by MD's who, when I pressed them, could only justify the procedures by saying "Well, Medicare will pay for it."

Did you have power of attorney or what standing did you have in the interaction between physician and patient if you aren't paying for it? There's nothing easy about all this- for example, and without pointing fingers: it can be more of a worry when relatives try to deny grandma treatment than when they demand heroic measures. Especially if grandma is sitting on some plum real estate that can be sold and distributed once she carks it.

>>Maybe you can explain how [Michelle Obama] helped save the lives of those people you mentioned who are not sacks of wheat?

Nepotism and sinecures were normal practice amongst the 1% throughout living memory. Even the middle classes do it - internships, holiday jobs and networking is offered first to the scions of small businesses all over the US. My advice- let it go. A sinecure for Michelle rather than some other 1%er is chump change and a distraction when there's a $47T medicare deficit that people refuse to acknowledge.