I think there will be a general trend across all medical specialties that will lower reimbursements. Especially, since medicare is doing across the board cuts (ie 4-5% this year), although there were some pushes do delay or reverse the cuts in congress. I won't get into the medicare reimbursement formula here, but needless to say there is factor, (you can call it X), that gets applied/multiplied to each procedure and when that goes down, reimbursements go down at a certain rate.
The thing with rads is that the demand, currently and for the foreseeable future, outstrips the supply. Same thing is happening in anesthesia. And probably pathology and every other specialty because of the baby boomers. It's very hard to ignore this demographic trend.
The whole thing with any specialty is that new you need to push the envelope in terms of evolutionary and revolutionary technology. This is one of the few ways to keep up the price point for any product or service. For example, evolutionary means finding more ways to make the same technology useful, such as functional MRI of the brain or PET imaging for cancer. For example revolutionary, means finding new different based technology ie thermal imaging and the like. I think genetic/molecular technology could very well be the next "big thing" in path (ie revolutionary technology). I have seen some of the molecular gene chips used for cancers such as lymphoma and it looks promising (at least in terms of prognosis and soon that may spill over to treatment strategies).
In terms of salaries, think the salary service quote there is a reflection of the market in the midwest, where it seems they do most of their placements for various specialties.
*I hope technologies never stabilize in radiology*
Radiology has pushed the envelope for the past 25 years, but past performances cannot be used to predict future performance.
Anyway, what does Vox know about business matters anyway?