alt Hacker NewsSomeone should try this with medicine. Instead of subsidizing insurance (demand side), let’s spend the money to bring doctors to the USA from all over the world and have them work in free clinics (supply side).
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You basically can’t or it won't have the same effects because medicine doesn’t really follow the same dynamics as most other markets: the supplier (doctor) has an information asymmetry and thus makes most of the decisions, while the buyer (patient) is not usually the payer (insurance) so aren’t really incentivized to save.
Kenneth Arrow famously analyzed the healthcare market and made the above insight: https://assets.aeaweb.org/asset-server/files/9442.pdf
I know he was a Nobel Laureate but not sure if this is the work that won him the Nobel.
Updated: I should qualify my statement by pointing out this is for the US healthcare system.
You don't even need to import foreign doctors: just increase the number of residency slots.
We already do that? I mean, minus the free clinic thing.
we also could just stop having the federal government limit the number of residency slots so we could have enough doctors trained in the US.