On the topic of whether or not salaries (as opposed to profits) in a government-operated system would be adequate to attract students into medicine, please look at the Department of Veterans Affairs. All VA physicians are salaried, although many also work as professors of medicine at university medical schools. The VA consistently has higher than average system-wide ratings by the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Health Care Organizations for both quality of care and patient satisfaction. (2002 VA mean score 93, ationwide mean score 91) I worked as a human resources director in the VA for many years, and the only facilities that had difficulty attracting highly qualified and board certified physicians were in rural areas, and that problem is not unique to the VA.

Once again, of course, a single-payer system is not and never has been on the table in the US.