If it helps at all, Doctor580, medicine wasn't always like this. Back before the 70s, doctors by and large didn't go into it for the money, because there wasn't the obscene amount of money to be made that there is now. There were no insurance co parasites. It was seen as a calling, at least by my mother, a public health pediatrician who graduated second in her class at Columbia, and by generations of my family who were doctors including one who treated soldiers on both sides of the Civil War (and got in trouble for it). Medicine has devolved into commodity rather than calling, victim of capitalism's way of turning everything sacred and serious into a price tag.

I'm just thankful my mother died in 1993 and didn't have to see what medicine has become. She was totally devoted to maternal and child health, especially for the poor, and argued for universal single payer back in the 70s when it was first brought up as the alternative to HMOs and private insurance. We all know how that went

I don't know if we can ever get back to the way it was, which would include restoring the public trust in the medical profession, but I suppose it's theoretically possible. Many things would have to change first. I don't think I'll live that long.