Doctors share many of the same frustrations with US health care as their patients do.
 Credit: Universal History Archive / Getty

The shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and the public’s reaction to it has left many people looking at the rotted foundations of US health care with clearer eyes, and asking once again who is to blame for this long-simmering crisis.

Insurers are popular villains — and they have definitely earned their reputation by employing underhanded tactics to restrict benefits. But other observers have recently pointed to doctors as the underlying driver of the US health care crisis because of the prices charged for their services, the highest in the world on average; hospital and physician spending account for most of the system’s costs.

That has in turn drawn backlash from doctors who, as the clinicians who actually care for patients, felt unfairly maligned for the system’s problems.

It was the latest round of a blame game that obstructs our ability to meaningfully change the health care system. Much has been written recently on the aggregate contributions of health insurers and providers — hospitals, doctors, nurses […]

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