You'd lose that bet. I was trained and I work in a healthcare system where there is no profit motive. No one in my hospital sees an extra dime for seeing an extra patient, performing an additional procedure, or ordering another test. I also work in a healthcare system where I am well protected from malpractice torts. Yet, and you'll just have to trust me here, excessive and low-yield tests get ordered and are performed at probably a greater rate than when a profit motive and stronger malpractice concern exist - probably because there are no insurance companies to act as a check on the system (I moonlight locally, so I have some perspective on what it's like on the "outside", as we call it).
I see your point about CYA in the legal world, but consider this: clients, i.e. patients, in medicine do want to pay for me to cover my ass. And I disagree with the idea that the healthcare system is chiefly responsible for that expectation. I think it has more to do with A)the crazy evolution of our health insurance and how patients are divorced from the actual cost and B)a better informed populace who can read on WebMD about how their headache might be from a bleeding aneurysm and how they might need a head CT. Regardless of how we got their, whether it's demanding for unnecessary antibiotics for their child's viral ear infection or opting to biopsy something when it could have been surveilled for less cost, patients largely prefer more and more elaborate things to be done.
Believe me, I know that there are some shady, underhanded things that some physicians do to improve their bottom line. I find it particularly loathsome considering my chosen profession and career path. I also think that it's a negligible part of the extraneous healthcare costs in this country, as evidenced by, IMO, rampant superfluous tests I see even in the absence of a profit motive. These extra costs are incurred chiefly, I think, because the physician feels compelled to incur them - whether due to pressure directly from the patient or from the threat (real or imagined) of legal action.