“Operating successfully within this framework requires greater awareness of differences among insurance policies and discussions of treatment options that are sensitive to patients’ out-of-pocket expenses.”

“Doctors need to understand the landscape has changed. A doctor’s primary concern used to be whether a patient had insurance. Now, it’s the type of insurance,” Devon M. Herrick, Ph.D., a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, told Medical Economics.

As for patients, they are already showing a disinclination to have as many healthcare-system interactions as they used to  now that the per-visit and per-procedure costs are becoming far less opaque and thus much more daunting.

This, understandably, scares many clinicians fearful of lower income.

Still, the “Silver Tsunami” of aging and thus ailing Baby Boomers probably ensures that business will remain generally good and that U.S. clinicians will remain by far the highest paid in the world.