Is that the educational costs for professionals are much, much lower because the education is heavily subsidized by the government. A doctor in France or Canada does not have $200k+ in debt coming out of school, which is common for U.S. docs. Even "state schools" are often that high---4 years of medical school at UCSF (granted, the UC schools are expensive compared to other state schools) is $98,000 in tuition alone.

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It would be interesting to see the comparison of doctor's salaries between Canada and the U.S. adjusted for this debt burden/

I didn't know that doctors were still paying off their college debts in their 60's.

Perhaps not, but $200k in debt (plus compounded interest during the residency, since residents do not make a significant amount during the 3+ years of residency) is a significant amount of money, even on a high salary. Would a system in which a person is in debt until they are 60 to pay off medical school loans be desirable? Or, more importantly, would anyone agree to become a doctor under such a system?

Most doctors actually get paid less than 50% of what they bill.

In a single payer system, doctors would recieve 100%.

the education debt problem in a govt-paid health carer system could be easily remedied by having the government pay off the education loans of any doctor (or nurse) willing to work for the federal health care system. If, over five years, we wanted a system to absorb 100,000 doctors into this system, and paid off their $200K loans, it would cost $4B per year to pay off those loans, about what those doctors would then be paid each year.

So then that's not really the problem, is it? All those doctors don't want to work for the government (I can't say I blame them), and get their salaries decided by a political appointee, probably from a fundamentalist college whose only qualifications are party and religious allegiance.

The goverment (Vis à Vie Medicare or medicaid) already pay signifigantly less then 100% of charges submitted. Think 15-30 cents on the dollar. Also keep in mind Medicare has been poised to reduce fees another 10% due to some arcance budget formula it's indexed to