Friday, April 22, 2011

Supply Side Solutions to the Cost of Medical Care

I commented on this on Yglesias's blog in the past. Rather than focusing only on cutting demand, either by regulating what procedures and devices are approved (Obamacare) or by cutting the money available to spend on medical care (Ryancare), we need to seriously expand the supply of care, thereby cutting prices and hopefully costs..

We could do this by opening our gates to all medical professionals from other countries. Here's an interesting post on Chris Blattman's blog about the effects of such migration, including these sentences: "For decades, more nurses have left the Philippines to work abroad than leave any other country on earth. Yet in the Philippines today there are more Registered Nurses per capita than in the United Kingdom. This happened because so many Filipinos trained up as nurses to take advantage of opportunities abroad that this more than offset the departures."

We could do this by contracting with some universities to develop new schools of nursing and medicine.

We could do this by changing the laws so someone licensed as a nurse or doctor in one state could practice in any state.

We could  reduce certification requirements, offsetting the laxity with increased transparency. I'd rather be treated by a doctor with lesser qualifications but a long history of success than vice versa.

We could forgive a portion of student loan indebtedness for those medical students who go into primary care for x years.

We could allow nurses to do in medical clinics what we allow them to do in schools.

We could encourage medical tourism: people going to Mexico or India for operations (as the Amish do now).

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