Reply #115: What you just said:

[avrdream]

"Doctors are not much better! Their office staff is huge so they can fight the layers of paper & the nurses that limit fees by insurance companies - kind of a self made empire on both sides that is never ending? Each side just keeps getting bigger & bigger..."

I am a doctor, have done the private practice thing and I can tell you that there is no empire being created by most of us. The size of staff gets bigger and bigger in order to have people who can fill out all the insurance company forms correctly, answer phone calls from the insurance nurses who are checking the correctness of our procedures, and then who are computer literate enough to figure out the 43 different ways we have to file a claim on-line (only to have it rejected over and over again until finally getting paid a fraction of the cost about 6 months later).

Please be careful about your generalizations. Most physicians in my field are struggling to stay afloat.