July 29, 2012
Apparently NYT reporters never heard of immigration. This is the only way to explain a front page piece that discusses an alleged shortage of doctors in the United States that never once discusses the possibility of bringing more doctors in from other countries.
As a practical matter this should be very easy to do since doctors in the United States earn on average about twice as much as their comparably trained counterparts in Western Europe and Canada.They earn five to ten times as much as doctors in the developing world.
If the government were to set up mechanisms that could fast track the certification of doctors from other countries so that they could quickly establish that they have been trained to U.S. standards and then would be free to come to practice in the United States just as any native-born doctor, it is likely hundreds of thousands of doctors from around the world would quickly take advantage of the opportunity. (In the case of developing countries, it is easy [even a DC policy wonk could do it] to design mechanisms where they would be compensated for doctors who came to the United States so that they could train two or three doctors for every one that came to the United States. This would ensure that developing countries gained from the arrangement as well.)
It is incredible that the NYT is so committed to protectionism that it would not even discuss immigration in this context of a doctor shortage. This protectionism is far more harmful both economically and to the country’s health than the trade barriers that the NYT has often written about. It is perhaps worth noting that the protectionism that gets highlighted in the NYT and other media outlets tends to favor less-educated workers.
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