Basically, you have one company that has already paid $250K recruiting the doc and another company that paid close to $0. So if it comes to a bidding war over salary, the former company will always be at a financial disadvantage. And budgets always have limits.
Further, as others have mentioned, there are other ways to contractually recoup relocation costs without a non-compete. A "you must pay back your relocation costs if you leave within a year" clause is far more justifiable than a "you can't work as a physician within 30 miles for at least 1 year if you ever leave us ever" clause.
(The same type of payback clause could apply if you did something drastic like pay off their entire student loans in one lump sum, though I am assuming that in most cases firms don't do that.)
[0] https://healthrecruitlink.com/blog/what-will-it-cost-to-recr...
2. Workers are not serfs to be bought and sold. If the acquiring company wants the talent, then they should structure the deal in a way that makes the talent want to stay, not use legal handcuffs to force them to.
3. I can see this as an argument for noncompetes being legal in some very limited cases, but most jobs don't need this. Others have suggested requiring garden leave in lieu of a noncompete, and in the few roles where this applies I suspect that would work out fine.