I live in an area where you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a medical provider (Baltimore); the hospitals all have specialty centers for cancer, women's health, cardiac care, orthopaedics, sports medicine, and so on.  This kind of construction, equipment and staffing is enormously expensive and the only way to justify it, to cover the overhead and then some, is to make sure you have plenty of people to treat.  That means promotions and PR and sometimes, it means doing procedures people don't need - like arterial stents.

Look at the countries that offer single-payer, socialized or hybrid systems; they spend less money and get better outcomes.  The Japanese go to the doctor more than people in any other country, and yet, their care is inexpensive, there is significantly less drain on the economy, and by generally recognized measures, they are healthier. I do not think it is unreasonable to consider the beneficial effect of not being financially and mentally stressed by the worry that not having insurance high insurance brings, or that of premiums and co-pays that keep going up and up and up.

If one of the problems here is that doctors have to make so much money to cover the cost of their education, then let the government subsidize that education and training; isn't that preferable to continuing to pump billions of dollars into the insurance companies?

Where we spend our money has a great deal to do with what we get for it, and it ought to be obvious to even Congress that it isn't patients who are driving the cost of care through the roof, and the answer isn't to keep cutting care in order to produce an imcreasing profit margin for insurance companies.

Unless you are committed to a Wall Street-controlled business model that treats individuals as profit centers.

What you're whining about regarding the cost of education is the result of diminishing tax support for higher education.  Constantly lowering taxes has placed an ever greater burden on the individual  student/family. There's an easy solution to that problem.  Raise taxes.

And you're dead wrong about the young costing enormous sums to treat.  The examples you cite affect a very small percentage of the population.

Hell, I didn't even bother to have annual physicals until I was in my late 50s.

Personally I could care less what doctors are paid.  If your doctor threatens to quit practicing medicine because of pay then I suggest you get another doctor.

For that matter, if American doctors don't feel they're adequately compensated I suggest we open the borders and allow a larger number of foreign doctor into the country.  If factory jobs and an increasing number of white collar jobs can be outsourced to cut labor costs then I suggest that we allow more foreign doctors into the countrty to help cut labor costs.  We could start by inviting those underpaid Swedish doctors you're talking about.

Another ridiculous situation regarding doctors is their reluctance/refusal to treat Medicare and Medicaid patients.  If lawyers take on cases pro bono then doctors should be required by law to treat at least some Medicare and Medicaid patients along with their other clients.

We've been coddling high income people in this country for far, far too long.  As a nation we're repaid by their continuing demand for ever higher pay, ever lower taxes and in the case of doctors, refusal to extend their services to the whole of the community.