June 05, 2015
No, Krauthammer didn’t actually come out in support of free trade. Instead he wants us to be concerned that doctors in the United States are quitting (to become shoe salespeople?) because they don’t like Obamacare.
Since our doctors get paid on average roughly twice as much as those in other wealthy countries and even more relative to doctors in less developed countries, there should be little problem attracting large numbers of people willing to train to U.S. standards and work as doctors in the United States, even if it means filling out annoying forms.
However, since protectionists dominate trade policy, we are not likely to see an opening of physicians to foreign competition. While our trade negotiators are happy to craft deals that put manufacturing workers in competition with low paid workers in the developing world, they do not want to do the same with doctors. Instead, we are supposed to be worried that doctors are unhappy even though many are in the richest one percent of the country and the vast majority are in the richest two percent.
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