Why don't Canadian doctors move to the U.S. to make more money?

The following is a Quora response to the question: Why aren’t Canadian doctors moving to the U.S.? 

Why not ask an Ontario doctor here on Quora who did.

Yes, as she recounts, she was lured south by higher fees which turned out to be true. What she didn’t know was the cost of staff to manage all the insurance companies used by her patients. They liaise with the insurers to determine patient coverage, coverage for specific diagnosis or treatment, accounts receivables, and so on.

After two years in the lone star state, she went through her books and discovered in addition to the administrative staff she also had, among other delights, higher malpractice insurance premiums. Bottom line, her take-home was lower than in Ontario.

The result was she closed her practice. She returned to Ontario where she had more coin in her pocket and an even bigger bonus, she got to practice medicine with her patients rather than insurance with her patient and the insurance company.

American doctors have to have large administrative staff to look after insurance billing and other accounting function. A Canadian doctor has billing as a part-time function usually by the clinic receptionist or, with some doctors, they do the billing themselves.

Canada has single-payer universal healthcare. The U.S. has two insurance risk management systems a function of which is healthcare. Insurers may deliver some healthcare but their real function is to pay eight figure salaries to executives and healthy dividends to investors. That means hundreds of millions of dollars go to executives and investor instead of healthcare for client/patients.