Dean Baker asks the obvious
Health Care Protectionists Cannot Even Envision Trade
Imagine a front page Washington Post article that talked about how the United States had a shortage of small cars. The article would talk about the limited capacity of the various small car assembly plants in Michigan, Ohio and elsewhere in the country. It would then discuss the amount of lead time needed to build new plants. It would also talk about the need to raise small car prices because it is so much more profitable to build big cars.
Imagine that the article never once mentioned the possibility of importing small cars. That's the front page Washington Post (a.k.a. "Fox on 15th") editorial warning readers that: "Primary-Care Doctor Shortage May Undermine Reform Efforts."
Yes, the United States already has a shortage of primary care physicians. Any serious reform plan will make this shortage worse by cutting back our excessive reliance on specialists. However, primary care physicians can be trained (to our standards) anywhere in the world. There are millions of very smart people in the developing world who would be delighted to train to U.S. standards and work for the $170,000 year (net of malpractice insurance) that our primary care physicians. (Developing countries could train 2-3 physicians for everyone that came to the United States if we placed a modest tax [e.g. 10 percent] on the earnings of foreign-trained physicians and repatriated it to the home country.)
If the Post were not such an ardently protectionist newspaper (don't they know about Smoot-Hawley and the Great Depression?), it would be writing about the potential to increase the number of foreign trained primary care physicians in the United States by removing legal and professional barriers. However, trade never even enters the Post's discussion. It was only interested in telling readers about problems with President Obama's health care plan.
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