I've been reading a lot lately about...

...why doctors go into medicine in the first place. The Wall Street Journal would have you believe that it's money and that if their incomes were cut by so much as a dollar a year they'd all rip down their shingles, chuck it all, and become bee-keepers. Health care reformers, on the other hand, argue that doctors are more interested in treating their patients. As a group, physicians never struck me as any more or less compassionate than anyone else. I think what motivates them to do a good job is pride in their work, just like everybody else.

When I was in college I'd ask someone why they wanted to be a doctor and they would invariably answer that it was because "they wanted to help people." Uh-huh. Kind of like my reason for going down to the Merc (never mind that I wasn't qualified to do anything else). I desperately wanted to provide much-needed liquidity to the financial markets. And to think that I got paid for doing something I love. What a country!

I would submit that the real reason that people go into medicine is that it's just a logical path for the smartest kids in high school. Especially if they're good at math and science, then every adult they know is telling them "You should be a doctor!" It doesn't hurt that medicine has always been among the most lucrative and prestigious fields, either. In fact, the kids in the neighborhood--if they ever see you--have to call you "Doctor So-and-So" instead of plain ol' "Mister" Gates or "Mister" Buffett. And whenever you walk past a group of people one of them always whispers, "He's a doctor. He has the power to save lives!" (Never mind that you spend most of your time giving nose jobs to insecure college girls.) So off these bright young kids go to college and into pre-Med because it's the most challenging major and on to Medical School and a practice. And only then do they think about money, because when they look around their neighborhood at all the lawyers and investment bankers and entrepreneurs they can't help thinking, "Hey, I'm smarter than all these guys; I work harder; why aren't I paid more? Isn't that how it's supposed to work?" Yes, but...

Just as the Romans woke up one day to find out they were Italians, so did American doctors wake up in the last few decades to find out they were employees of the insurance companies, just a notch above the guy with the plaid sport coat and cigar-breath who comes over to your house to sell you a policy. And they're not always as well-paid!

And just like the title of that famous David Mamet movie, things change. And things could change some more after health care is reformed; doctors may find themselves not as well-compensated as before. Now I don't take pleasure in that--the pre-Meds I knew in college were the smartest and hardest-working of all. But as JFK famously said, life isn't fair. I'll bet that just as doctors won't drop out of medicine, no one will be taking up a collection for them, either. They'll continue to practice medicine--with fewer administrative hassles--and continue to make a good living.