> That’s like taxing teachers for overcrowded classrooms to induce them to lobby teaching schools.
If the NEA restricted the number of teachers the same way the medical industry limits the number of doctors I'd say yes, this is a perfect analogy. Since they don't, then it's a bad analogy.
> Doctors can decide to set up practices in the area in their own.
Not sure about private practices, but hospitals can't just open up without the current hospitals in an area agreeing that it's under served.
> Patients can see and ask who’s the hold up is. Is the pay too low? Some crazy liability laws? Whatever.
> With this publicly available, it’s much easier to compare service across the state/nation/world without having to be on the inside.
If your city limited the number of auto mechanics and granted the guild of car repair persons control over who was allowed to become a mechanic and they only allowed one garage to open up in your town, you would correctly identify this as rent seeking behavior and not a market failure. The choices at that point would be to dissolve their monopoly on auto repair or to create conditions that would encourage their normal human behavior to attenuate the rent seeking. Do you really want to dissolve the AMA? Or would you rather encourage the AMA membership to change their behavior to not artificially limit the supply of doctors?
My solution doesn't give central orders about how to fix the problem, it simply creates a penalty when there is a problem. If the various practitioners realized they could be 20% more efficient while still maintaining quality that would be fine. Or they could create more practitioners. That would also be fine. The problem was created by the industry, the industry can fix the problem.
If the NEA restricted the number of teachers the same way the medical industry limits the number of doctors I'd say yes, this is a perfect analogy. Since they don't, then it's a bad analogy.
> Doctors can decide to set up practices in the area in their own.
Not sure about private practices, but hospitals can't just open up without the current hospitals in an area agreeing that it's under served.
> Patients can see and ask who’s the hold up is. Is the pay too low? Some crazy liability laws? Whatever.
> With this publicly available, it’s much easier to compare service across the state/nation/world without having to be on the inside.
If your city limited the number of auto mechanics and granted the guild of car repair persons control over who was allowed to become a mechanic and they only allowed one garage to open up in your town, you would correctly identify this as rent seeking behavior and not a market failure. The choices at that point would be to dissolve their monopoly on auto repair or to create conditions that would encourage their normal human behavior to attenuate the rent seeking. Do you really want to dissolve the AMA? Or would you rather encourage the AMA membership to change their behavior to not artificially limit the supply of doctors?
My solution doesn't give central orders about how to fix the problem, it simply creates a penalty when there is a problem. If the various practitioners realized they could be 20% more efficient while still maintaining quality that would be fine. Or they could create more practitioners. That would also be fine. The problem was created by the industry, the industry can fix the problem.