smooth

I was being facetious. The point I was making was that almost all of our doctors are trained and employed by public insitutions or wealthy, private corporations--they don't run their own businesses. That is, the closest we have to doctors in private practice are people who went through education systems like Harvard and work at Sharp's, Gottschalk's, or any other affluent private hospital. They don't go through years of medical school and languish in some private office on a street corner. the exeption to this might be in rural areas but, obviously, someone wouldn't be unable to "make it" if they were the only doctor within a 50 mile radius.

I may have misused the term "enlist" but I was thinking of the process you described. We evidently agree that military doctors enter medical school with the intent of working for the military long before they fail to succeed in private practice. I suspect that the allure of education funds, guaranteed job placement after graduation, and excellent benefits account for their decisions moreso than them being a bunch of lazy, incompetent doctors who couldn't make it in the "real world" as Ustwo suggested.