Worstrum, ignore Justinian, he's not worth it .

xeno, an anthropologist is hardly any good. Most cultures they discover are quickly ruined as the anthropologist forms their first contact with a different, for them intriguing, society. Cultures start to copy parts of our society (especially the use of money) and new generations start moving out of their culture into ours, out of pure curiousity and hopes that our society will provide them with an easier way of life. Countless cultures have been destroyed this way or are disappearing due to the new generation just not caring about the existance of their culture.
And aside from that the medicinal plant you named is more likely to be found in a biological expedition run by botanists and other (medically oriented) biologists, than by an anthropologist with absolutely no clue about biology or medicine.

If you really think practicioners of medicine, whether they be doctors or developers of new drugs, do not deserve their high pay, then i'd like you to look back to the situation before the invention of antibiotics and vaccines. Now, almost all diseases slowly (or rapidly, as in the case of the flu) mutate and adapt to our ways of fighting them: unless a disease is completely whiped out they will eventually become resistant to the drugs as the variations within the population with random mutations leading to resistance will become a larger and larger part of the entire population, to the point where the old drugs are no longer of any use. Aside from that, new diseases come into existance every so many years (think AIDS, Ebola and SARS), which cures will have to be found against (people are for isntance still working on the cure for AIDS). This is why medicine is one of the most innovative industries.
However, I do agree with you that the farmaceutic industry is one of the greediest industries as well, where new inventions are protected by patents which allows companies to ask ridiculous prices, not even proportionate to the amount of risk they take when starting a research.
But aside from the farmaceutic industry, I do not see why you do not appreciate the actual doctors and think they deserve a lower salary. As wornstrum said, med students have to attend uni for 6 years in what may be one of the most intense and time-consuming studies. However, at this time, they aren't allowed to practice medicine whatsoever: it is required for a med student to further specialize himself. Specialization may take anywhere between 4 years and 6 years, depending on the specialization. Furthermore, it's not like doctors do nothing while they are at work, or even when they're not, which I hope you can see.
The reason for why your doctor might've charged you 2000 dollars ( I take it you're from the USA? ) is because in the USA you have a ridiculous judiciary system that allows people to sue doctors for every minor inconvenience and suck them dry. A large part of that sum you paid is probably going to protecting himself in case he makes a mistake at one point, and the problem in medicine is that those mistakes are virtually always unreparable as you're working with a delicate, living organism.

xeno, may i ask you 2 questions:
what did you study?
are you a sympathizer of the Occupy movement?