Couldn't resolve it to my satisfaction.

Things in the US, vs other countries, are so far out of whack, I agree, can't be sure of what you are seeing. France has more docs per capita, and about the same number of nurses. But overall US employment in the sector is far higher, by an additional 7% of the US workforce, 11-12M people. French docs are paid a third what US docs are paid, but the French docs report better job satisfaction and better work/life balance, because the US docs get ground down by administrative overhead and bureaucracy. Then there is the eye-popping amount of fraud in the US, against both government programs, and private insurance companies. And the fraudster CEOs don't go to prison. The fraudster CEO of Columbia/HCA, going on to be elected Governor twice, and now sits in the Senate, instead of Leavenworth. I kept rechecking the numbers the net sifter was giving me, and my math. $875/person/year, in the US lost to medical fraud, vs $116 in France and $25.22 (yes, twenty five dollars and twenty two cents) in the UK? What? You want to think you are missing something, maybe a lot of things, because the discrepancies are so huge.

Steve