As a doctor and Hippocratic Oath sayer, I know that most of the time supply and demand will beat out my ideals. I don't know what why the next generation is reluctant to become docs. Are they less charitable? Are the income or other factors a big disincentive?
I would not try to talk anyone out of becoming a doctor. (Unless their motivations were selfish or otherwise wrongly placed.) I love it. I have loved caring for people in this way since I worked as an orderly in a nursing home. One of my original motivations for pursuing medicine was that every time I mentioned I wanted to be a doctor, the nuns would pat me on the head. The nuns gave head pats to two vocations: priests and doctors. Maybe the doctor shortage is secondary to the nun shortage.
BTW it is hard work. I would not go into medicine thinking it is easy, emotionally, mentally, or physically.

It's unlikely that malpractice claims and awards (and/or settlements) have much to do with incompetence in the profession. Most of the problem is that medicine is by nature something less than an exact science - and our society can't deal with that - and our civil justice system requires docs to pay for it.
If - as is the case in some states/localities especially - docs can't make a go of it, the main solution is malpractice reform.

If only doctors were allowed to marry, or be women!

There is always a red flag that goes up in my mind whenever people mention money as a reason not be charitable.
Unfortunately, what the physician proposes is an entirely logical and natural conclusion in a society that already has legalized the killing of millions of unborn and the starving of the elderly and incapacitated all for the sake of money (sometimes referenced as "poverty", "convenience" or "financial burden").
It is not like doctors take an oath to protect life at all costs anymore. So why not deprive the poor of medical assistance? We all know that only the wealthy can afford "rare commodities."
So let's see, by embracing the culture of death and advocating a society loosely based on eugenics, not only have we NOT succeeded in eradicating poverty (by not allowing the poor to reproduce -- because we want their babies dead, you know) but we are moving rapidly to another extreme where the concept of "poor" expands to include the majority of the population.
It kind of reminds me of Communist China when they killed all the bourgeoisie, including the skilled doctors. All that were left were just dumb young interns with their fingers up their nose. Needless to say, this compounded the suffering of the Chinese people. A society thousands of years older than Christianity, and in a decade they were reduced practically to the stone age.
Which also makes me wonder: it is all the rage today to cynically disparage religion and religious movements by saying something uninformed like "too many people have been killed already in the name of God." But if you look at the greatest tragedies of the last century, which were also the greatest tragedies of the human history, they were all SECULAR movements that sent mankind to the brink.
Yet to this day, secular movements do not have any negative stigma associated with them.

Another factor to consider is that some states are attempting to limit a doctor's freedom of conscience and religion by mandating that the doctor performs abortions and prescribes contraception.

If the doctors want to do something about high medical malpractice costs, they need to do what lawyers do: SELF-POLICE.
Right now there are medical boards and the like, but they seem to do very, very little to get rid of incompetent doctors. I would think that the good doctors would be eager to get rid of the bad ones so that their premiums would drop, but apparently that's not sporting or something.