Health economist here.<p>This is a great piece top to bottom. There is no credible objection I'm aware of to any of the deregulation proposals included herein. The American Medical Association will object, because they don't want the competition because it will have a negative effect on its members' incomes.<p>If you think health care is too expensive in the US, the changes proposed herein are Job 1. There is no reason why Mexican, Canadian, British, Indian, German, ... doctors should not be allowed to come and practice in the US with more than some cursory verification that they actually attended a medical school where they are from. There is no reason for anyone in the US to be denied a slot at medical school (not a <i>particular</i> medical school, but <i>some</i> medical school in general).<p>One final note: please don't be fooled into have sympathy for the large debts doctors incur through medical school. This is not the population which is deserving of student debt relief. I'm happy to shorten their education, of course, but doctors are consistently among the very highest paid people in American society. Retiring even a million dollars in debt (much larger than any number in this article) is not that hard on a highly-paid specialists' salary, which can easily <i>average</i> half a million dollars per year.<p>The author of the piece has proposed to do further pieces on an "Abundance Agenda" for the US. Essentially this looks at ways to increase supply in things which are currently expensive but don't have to be. I haven't read other parts of it but I strongly recommended following him and looking further into the idea.
One interesting thing to note is that Medicare (US gov't paid healthcare for the elderly) pays hospitals DOUBLE the price for the same procedures that an MD can do in her own clinic. They pay this supposedly so that hospitals can take in patients who can't afford to pay in the emergency room, etc.<p>But to me this is another one of those cases where poor government policy boosts prices. Hospitals already have an incentive to buy up small practices to reduce competition, but if hospitals are paid double the price for the same procedure compared to an ambulatory clinic, the government is just incentivizing concentration in the market.
The U.S. spent $3,795.4 billion on health care in 2019 - where did it go?<p><a href="https://www.ama-assn.org/sites/ama-assn.org/files/styles/related_article_stub_image_1200x800_3_2/public/2021-04/2019-where-money-goes-chart.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://www.ama-assn.org/sites/ama-assn.org/files/styles/rel...</a>
Another thing the US could do to reduce prices is to give people the option for certain expensive procedures (hip transplants, knee replacements, etc.) to be done outside the US by qualified doctors. Then the patient could get a discount on their insurance every month or get an incentive from medicare that splits the savings with the patient.
Most common jobs in Congress? Doctor and lawyer. Oddly enough those are the only things we don't have H1B style programs for. Programmers we import by the truckload, no problem. Suggest that a African clinic doctor is fine to treat your ear infection and everyone is up in arms.