There are few things here:
1.) There has been for last 20+ years WAYYYY too many pathologists trained. There is simply no arguing with this, the data is clear.
2.) Up until I would say a 5 or so years ago, some residents with top notch interpersonal skills were still able to get partnership track jobs. I would suggest this has dramatically changed and hastened with the Obamacare changes.
Personally I have zero incentive to hire, train and develop new partners. Not that Im a total dick, but because it honestly doesnt make my life any easier having more partners. I think we will see mergers between small and medium groups rather than new hires moving up through the ranks in pp groups.
That said, there are still a host of solid jobs with pensions in the public sector which can offer zero drama allowing you to totally unplug when you arent on service.
Top notch residents are still desirable. I don't think that has really changed. I do agree with you though that partnership type jobs are decreasing. I don't really think this is because of Obamacare though. It's part of the trend in healthcare - more consolidation, more mergers, more cost cutting (most of which is done to finance the extreme bloat of administrative positions). Hospital systems are even merging. Small hospitals are either disappearing or being swallowed up by larger systems. When this happens the stuff like lab, imaging, purchasing, etc all consolidates as well which reduces need for pathologists.
For example, our hospital system could theoretically swallow up a small hospital in the area. If that hospital has 3-4 pathologists for 20,000 specimens the combined lab does not have a need for an additional 3-4 pathologists. I mean, I hear a lot about blaming obamacare and all that but a lot of this is textbook capitalism. Obamacare has a lot of issues but be careful about ascribing everything bad about healthcare currently to it. Many of these trends were set in motion years ago. Obamacare may have helped some come to fruition or exacerbate some, but it has probably lessened some others. Nobody, especially patients, wants to pay for anything anymore, with the possible exception of hospitals wanting to pay more for administrators.
The other trend simultaneously is that of hospital systems purchasing physician practices or hiring their own physicians. Many will contract with large groups (our hospital contracts with radiology and ER, for example). But a lot want all their physicians to be employees, or at the very least partners in the same system. This reduces leakage of patients elsewhere and allows more control. Again, this is capitalism. Regulations do make it harder for physicians to go it alone, however, so don't take my point wrong. Our group is something of a hybrid in that we are partners in a multispecialty physician group which maintains significant autonomy yet is still linked to the larger health system.
And young physicians now want increasingly less to do with any part of the business side of things. They WANT to be employees. They don't want any say over expenses, hiring, budgets, etc. They want to work their shift and go home. This of course works by giving more power to the administrators who are happy to take it in return for compensating these doctors less. Since it is their first job, in a sense, the doctors happily agree in return for more vacation time. You can say they are having the wool pulled over their eyes except they are happy to have this happen. By the time they figure out they could have been getting paid more it might be too late.
There is a lot of very condescending talk on these forums (I am not talking to LADoc here) as though everyone who doesn't agree with them is ignorant. There is some ignorance but it cuts both ways. And people honestly do have different priorities. There are many, many people who are happy to get paid 30% less (which can be >$100k) to not have to deal with the problems of being in private practice.