Doctors whine about not being paid enough. All the time. For many of them, their favorite pastime is whining about taxes. Though having worked as a tax advisor to scores of them, very few had a clue what they were talking about.

They whined like crazy about medicare almost 50 years ago. But medicare began meteoric rise in physicians’ incomes. It created wednesday golf day. It helped do away with house calls.

In fairness, for most specialties, their incomes have remained stagnant or declined over the last 20 years, and they don’t play golf on wednesdays as often as they used to. They work harder and different than they did 20 years ago.

My prediction, they (along with other allied health care providers) will be the single largest beneficiary of this bill, behind the currently uninsured. A bigger beneficiary than insurance companies. A bigger beneficiary than pharmaceutical companies. And a bigger beneficiary than hospitals. They won’t get paid more for each service. But they will have lots more paying patients.