ITT: people who assume doctors are accountants and go home in their sports car every night to tweak their prices and count the stacks of 100s they made that day

The reality is is doctors often have no control over cost. Yes, if you are the increasingly rare private group that is physician owned you do but certainly not if you are employed. These are 100% set by the bean counters who are paid twice my salary and have no idea about what we do on a day-to-day basis.

I have no idea what my services cost and for ethical reasons I don't want to. That inflicts bias and can lead to misdiagnosis.

I sacrificed 10 years of my life and took on over $275,000 of debt that continues to grow thanks to compound interest. I live in an average house and drive an average car because I have this debt to pay back.

Daily I am responsible for not harming dozens of patients while trying to make their lives better. With each decision I make I have the risk of being sued and losing everything I have worked for. All the while, my mid-level providers work relatively liability free because they work under my license and their mistakes are on my back. Adminstration pushes for higher numbers of patients andmore uncompensated work. When was the last time you spoke to a lawyer on the phone or had them complete a 5 page document for free?

Think twice before you criticize doctors and the sacrifices we have made. I didn't do this for the money, I assure you.

Physician here. I personally believe patients should do their own research, up to a certain point. There is a reason physicians have tens of thousands of hours of training. We quickly learn medicine is rarely black and white and straight from the textbooks. The art of medicine is a skill that takes a lifetime to develop, and is still not perfect.

Sure, you can search pubmed for the best therapies, but patients often don't know how to fully interpret a study. Was there enough power? Does the patient fit the studied population? Are the primary endpoints significant in this scenario? The knowledge is out there, but dangerous in the wrong hands.

Its generally a subpopulation of patients that give a reasonably self informed patient a bad reputation. Many patients (especially in the low income brackets) treat their physician like a McDonald's drive through. I want this, this, and this and I don't care about your extensive training and clinical judgement.

I honestly think this "I want this, this and this" comes down to how we infantalize adults in modern society, and how that comes out in the way that we pay for healthcare (insurance or social programs rather than out of pocket) and in the drug war. About half the time I go to the doctor, I already know what I want (i.e. not for diagnostic reasons) and if I could get it and at least try it out without a prescription, I wouldn't need to waste my time and the doctor's time. Sometimes I don't know what's wrong with me and I actually do want to utilize the doctor's diagnostic skill, but that's not always the case - the same is true when I visit a mechanic, sometimes you already know you need an oil change and a tire rotation or whatever.

Yes, people might make the wrong call about their health sometimes, but that's not the doctor's concern - they're adults, not infants, they've earned the right to make their own mistakes.