Another problem is the large hospital conglomerates that end up owning all local hospitals in some areas. Large corporate structures always end up disconnected from reality and optimizing for the wrong things.
Neither patient protection nor affordable care.
I think this is more about the retaliation of "having earned it/more," for all the decades of sacrifice becoming a thankless-physician entails. Money is a simple metric for simple people, but yes, absolutely it's about the money to a lot of people.
I dropped out after the first year, because I realized I would self-delete (at some point) should I continue on the careerpath to physicianhood. I am so grateful to still be here, xx years later, doing anything else:
If you want to help people and/or make lots of money, there are dozens of other career opportunities to do BOTH more-easily/better.
I don't really mean this as a dig at them either. It's just the way of business. High level leadership takes a certain type of person to survive and thrive. This tends to be people who want to optimize the value of every hour they spend working.
*source: am a physician