“As with the Connecticut parking spaces, we have through the entitlements (and through the tax preferences given to employer-based medical benefits) done a great deal to encourage the consumption of health-care services while doing nothing to encourage the production of them. In fact, various political efforts at health-care reform going back decades have made it less profitable, less prestigious, and less enjoyable to be a doctor, with the result that our best and brightest no longer even consider medicine to the extent that they once did, preferring jobs in finance. About one in four U.S. doctors today is an immigrant, meaning that without high levels of immigration the number of medical professionals would be nosediving relative to the population. Life as an American doctor looks pretty good to a recent med school graduate in Bombay or Karachi, but not to a Harvard-bound valedictorian at an American high school. But even with immigration, the number of physicians in many specialties has stagnated, and new policies in the PPACA, such as punitive taxes on manufacturers of medical devices, will contribute toward stagnation in other sectors of the health-care industry if they are enacted.

Excerpt From: Kevin D. Williamson. “The End Is Near and It’s Going to Be Awesome.” HarperCollins, 2013-05-01. iBooks.

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