[Noah930]

Another benefit of wrenching is the ability to raise prices to reflect the increased costs of doing business/inflation/etc. Granted that's kept in check by regular capitalistic market forces, but over time you (and your competitors) can raise rates to keep up with the cost of living. Reasonably a mechanic would expect to make more in 10 years than he/she does now.

In medicine (at least from my procedural perspective) it seems every year you get paid less to do the same thing. Maybe not by much, but by 1 or 2% annually. And that's largely dictated by the federal government, which sets Medicare rates. Virtually all insurance payment plans are based upon some percentage of Medicare, so as Medicare reimbursement rates diminish annually, so too do private insurance reimbursement rates (unless you continually negotiate better and better contracts with insurance companies annually, which is more than highly unlikely). And the majority of customers who can't afford health insurance also can't afford your product regardless of how inexpensive you make it, so there's a limited number of cash-paying patients onto which you can "pass the costs."