Brian Klepper was recently up at Medscape bemoaning the lack of physician leadership in righting the troubled ship of our health care system, and challenging physicians to do better.

He got lots of feedback, not all of it as negative as you’d think, and he had his own response. All well worth reading.

On the other hand, HSC says that in real terms we’re paying physicians substantially less than in 1995. I suspect that most of that pay "cut" was in the 1990s, and things seem to be picking up again, but — as one reader asked me — there is not that much good data on physician incomes, and in real terms they did very well between 1960 and 1990.