What a sad thread to read. This may sound like a conspiracy theory, but I am an amateur history and politics buff, so I can't help seeing things in a broader perspective.
The "divide and conquer" principle has worked for millennia and whether we want to admit it or not every country/society has a ruling class. Doctors as a group are NOT in the ruling class in the US, and especially because they do have more than average income and more education than most, they are prime targets for "divide and conquer" (they pose a greater threat to the ruling class).
Just a cursory glance over various internet fora will reveal to you that just as many people here feel that police officers are overpaid compared to doctors, there are millions of people who think doctors are grossly overpaid. Teachers begrudge the nurses' pay, nurses begrudge the doctors' pay, doctors' begrudge the police officers' pay, etc.
Groups within our society have been artificially pitted against each other, with great help from the media (which last I checked was owned by the aforementioned ruling class and NOT any doctors or police officers or the like). We, as a society, have lost our value system (I don't mean this in the "religious" or "family values" sense). It seems that a majority, or at least a sizable and very vocal minority, of us have subscribed to the false belief that no profession or calling has any inherent value, and nobody deserves to have more than the almighty "I and ME". The questions "If I don't have it, how come he has it? What does HE do that's so special?" is immediately answered with "He's not special, he definitely doesn't deserve it! He's no better than I!"
The quick and light dismissal of Ken Lay on this thread is also VERY telling. Did you notice just HOW quickly he was dropped and loggers and fishermen and nurses were brought in? It isn't even something that we are doing deliberately, but we have been nicely programmed so we do it without even thinking or trying. The argument that he is "unique", because
"Not everyone can go on and become a CEO of one of the top banks in the country."
is a statement of truth but NOT a reasonable argument. By the same logic, NOT everyone can go on and become the highest paid cop in the country. That officer is JUST as unique among cops as Ken Lay is among Bank CEOs. For the 5,000 LI cops that were mentioned who seem to be pulling in larger than average salaries, we can find 10,000 financial sector workers and CEOs, right in New York, who make multiple times the average salary of the LI cops, with little more than a B.A. or B.S.
The point I am trying to make is that as long as we as individuals and as subgroups within society (doctors) are busy bickering and looking for ways to undercut others, we do not notice the bigger picture. Look carefully at the past 30 or so years of American history (I like to use Kissinger as the starting point, I am not necessarily saying that there is a correlation, just that his time in power seems to coincide with the start of the spiral). The deterioration of the medical establishment and the slow but systematic marginalization of physicians as a group has been going on for 30+ years. I am not saying that the old establishment was great, or that we need to go back to it, but when old things are being discarded, as they often should be, new and better things must arise in their place. Why did we break down the old and imperfect establishment, so that we could end up with THIS mess on our hands? What a patently absurd course of events.
In many ways medicine has been hijacked from physicians (and their patients), and we are too busy worrying about cops' salaries to do something about it or even fully comprehend the situation (in some cases).
/end soap box speech, thanks for your attention
