>>These MD's are getting hundreds of thousands per year in kickbacks at the expense of the poor schlubs who have to pay the premiums, the taxpayer or both.
>>These are the ones being caught.

The issue in the US is that it's illegal to pay or receive kickbacks for channeling business to one lab. The risk that this could raise prices is theoretical: your citation doesn't show this is what caused US healthcare to be so expensive or even that it increased the cost of services for the bad apple physicians' patients. But that doesn't matter, just as it doesn't matter whether running a red light actually caused a crash. It's illegal and bad apple physicians ought to be charged for putting the integrity of the system and profession at risk.

But here's a reality check: health systems all over the world have physicians who refer their patients to providers and labs. In some jurisdictions it's NOT illegal to channel all business to one provider in exchange for benefit. Sometimes one provider even gains a monopoly and all others are driven out of business. Yet every single one of those jurisdictions has cheaper care than the US.

The anecdotal evidence in your citation doesn't support your "these MDs are getting hundreds of thousands of years per year in kickbacks" either. I see one physician with a figure of $100K over an unspecified period, and another accused of $200K over a long period who hasn't been found guilty, so it seems unfair to blame him for trillions of dollars of health system cost problems just yet. Another took $250K for referring to pain specialists- so are you saying the patients didn't realize they had no pain and didn't need to be seen at all? The other reference is for a bottle of wine here, tickets to the game there. I've seen that many times, though usually as a professional courtesy or end of year gift rather than a blatant bribe. Including in systems that spend thousands of dollars less per head of population than it costs in the US.

Meanwhile the US businessman who bribed 39 physicians for unspecified amounts, himself took $100 million additional revenue, allowing him to live like a king according to your citation. Why aren't you accusing businessmen of being responsible for expensive care in the US? Because you have a chip on your shoulder.

I'd recommend that you divide the number of bad apple doctors by the number of doctors in the US (about a million) before straining at gnats to claim that that this is the reason why "US medicine costs so much for so little." Yeah, I know - "these are just the ones who have been caught" and there's implication in the article that fraudulent claims could be tens of billions- but it's no use asking the prosecutor how many crooks there are out there, just as it's no use asking Bill Fitzgerald whether doctors are to blame. ;-)

The good news is that more and more physicians are taking salaried positions where they'll have no financial interest in their facility's referral decisions or billing. By your logic, that should reduce cost markedly with physician fingers out of the till and everything will be peachy.