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But Dr. Haggie voiced no particular envy Tuesday at the statistics just published in the journal Health Affairs, saying that factors other than money influence where doctors settle, including for some the appeal of Canada’s universal, government-funded health system.

“A good salary package is an attractor, it’s a magnet but it doesn’t always have the same effect at the other end when you’re trying to retain people,” said Dr. Haggie. “The system in which (physicians) work is part of the attraction of working here.”

That migration to the U.S. has reversed in the last few years, with a small net influx of MDs from south of the border as incomes rose here, according to statistics and the accounts of medical recruitment agencies.

The new study’s authors, both health policy professors at New York’s Columbia University, did the research to help detail why the cost of health care is so steep in the U.S. compared to other countries.

It may partly reflect an American society where the mostly highly educated and skilled people in all fields tend to earn a bigger chunk of the overall wealth than similar groups in other countries, Miriam Laugesen, the lead researcher, said in an interview.

Regardless, the 2008 figures that Prof. Laugesen and her colleague gathered offer a fascinating glimpse at the profession in six countries, with stark differences in payment between nations, and between private and public payors in those places that have two-tier systems.