Physician compensation accounts for roughly eight percent of the total annual healthcare costs in the U.S., according to Jackson Healthcare, an Atlanta-based healthcare staffing and technology company.

“At eight percent of total healthcare costs, if physicians worked for free we would still have a serious cost problem,” said Richard Jackson, chairman and chief executive officer of Jackson Healthcare. “What this figure shows is that physician pay is not the primary contributor to healthcare costs.”

According to the most recent estimate from The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), overall U.S. healthcare spending in 2009 was $2.5 trillion. CMS reports that $505 billion accounts for physician clinical services. According to data from Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), physician compensation accounts for 37 percent of total collections, or $186 billion (7.5 percent of total U.S. healthcare spending).

Calculating the percentage using the most recent statistics on the number of practicing physicians in the U.S. from the American Medical Association and salary figures from MGMA, annual aggregate physician salaries total $216 billion, or 8.6 percent of total U.S. healthcare costs. The MGMA statistics were obtained from a 2010 report using 2009 data.