http://www.medicalbillingandcoding.org/medicals-costs-2/
Not sure I agree with everything (obviously the subjective judgements about doctor compensation) but I have yet to see evidence that malpractice is a serious player. I mean I would love for it to be because it is such an easy fix, but I just don't think it is. There are plenty of states with state medical boards or caps on maximum awards, and it isn't like they have spectacularly better health outcomes or cheaper rates. I think it is mostly irrelevant.
I clicked on another link on that page and got to state employees that made over $100K last year. You have lew perkins bilking the taxpayers out of $2.7M, far and away the highest (#2 was 1/5th of that). bernadette gray-little was 4th at $420K. Schulz was 10th at $345K. The rest of the top 10 are uk med.
Then came the shocker. Ranking #12...uk english prof and ex-uk chancellor robert hemenway. Really? We're spending $340K of taxpayer money to keep the gravy train running for a multimillionaire ex-university chancellor. just $5K and $2K less respectively to the KSU and wsu presidents? On top of that, from poking around on the uk english department website, it doesn't even list him as faculty. My guess is he doesn't even teach anything. Just collects a paycheck.
I guess that's why they call it "liberal" arts.