[noam_compsci]

The article was disappointing. It’s the first time in a while I’ve read the Economist but I feel the quality has really gone down.

Why did the Department of Health state there was a surplus? What policy decisions allowed them to make that recommendation? What mechanisms meant medical schools, who have an incentive to increase class size, reacted the way they did? What is the difference in salary for “DO’s”? What part do HMOs and insurance companies play, who surely have an incentive to lower the cost of medicine?

One argument is tacit collusion to “inflate salaries” which may be part of it, but if this accounts for all of the impact then it is a scandal and evidence of institutional corruption that should be paraded in the streets. I’d imagine a class action lawsuit by students who didn’t make it into med school against the DoH. I don’t think this answers it all.

In any case, I think the uppermost level of medicine will get decimated by AI. It’s mostly knowledge work with a focus on experience. It feels like the perfect use case for generative AI. On the other hand having more people doing the manual work (putting in a catheter etc) will likely last a lot longer as robotics has seemed to stall in advancements.

[zugi]

> One argument is tacit collusion to “inflate salaries” which may be part of it, but if this accounts for all of the impact then it is a scandal and evidence of institutional corruption that should be paraded in the streets.

The role of the AMA in restricting the supply of doctors has been paraded for decades, but it just doesn't catch on. People like their personal doctors and refuse to think ill of doctors, though they'll happily blame others in the medical industry. I find it quite believable that the doctors industry would err on the side of undersupply, making their own salaries high, rather than risk oversupply and a drop in salaries.

Is that "collusion"? That's just terminology. It's the standard "regulatory capture", as government officially delegates accreditation to the medical industry, despite the obvious conflict of interest. The AMA argues they're protecting doctor quality, even though they overtly worry about oversupply.