PSedrishMD

I think it would be impossible to have money as a primary goal and still be a good physician. There are folks like that in every community, but they are a tiny minority.
That kind of doc would be generally shunned by his/her peers and as a result their physician referral base would be non-existent. Not having a love of medicine and a genuine compassion for people would make for a very poor bedside manner (people know when you really care and when you're just going though the motions) and that would make the patient-to-patient referral route likewise small.
Lawsuits and state boards take care of most reckless practitioners eventually, and "drug writers" never last very long under state & FDA scrutiny. Docs trying to create wealth by inappropriate referrals and the like are targets of the Justice Dept., and any unhappy patient or disgruntled employee can file a complaint and perhaps enjoy the rewards that come from being a "whistle-blower".
The fact is, aside from some pretty elite subspecialties, it's hard to make more than $200,000 and easy to make less than $100,000. Considering that I had 10 years of education and training after college, that doesn't seem to me to be a fortune, though it is comfortable.
I have plenty of pts who out-earn me easily, including 2 kinds of pilots (airline and riverboat), a few attorneys, some small business owners and quite a number of salespeople (esp. those in the oil & gas business and shipyard sales in this area).
A few years ago I was listening to Howard Stern (!) and he had Mike Piazza on just after the trade from the Dodgers to the Mets. An irate caller from LA asked Mike how he could abandon his fans just for money (it was, I think, $6,000,000) and Mike asked him what he did for a living. He said "I'm a UPS driver". Mike asked him how much he made and that guy never missed a beat. "Ninety thousand."
Well whatever else they talked about I can't remember, but I certainly was wowed that I could have earned 3/4 of what I was making then by just driving a truck. I would not only have made more money over those years & incurred less debt but I would have had 14 years towards a retirement and lots better benefits than I get now working for myself.
But it's not that, because it's not about the money. What I can deliver means more to people than anything that can be delivered on a truck. Anyone who doesn't understand that doesn't need to even consider medicine as a profession.