The history of licensing of doctors and dentists is covered in the book "Competition And Monopoly In Medical Care" by Frech. Much of the motivation for licensing was reducing the number of doctors so they could raise prices. Licensing also enabled pervasive discrimination against Jewish, black, and female doctors (pg. 54).
"one benefit of licensure requires that it confer monopoly rents upon physicians." pg. 58
I can believe that was a motivation, but it's quite possible to have a licensing system for doctors and at the same time keep costs in check. For example European countries typically have much lower healthcare costs than the U.S. (even after taking into account tax money spent on the sector), despite still stringent licensing requirements for doctors. The U.S.'s system is a particularly bad case of letting the inmates run the asylum, so to speak, both on the occupational licensing side, and on the drug side (the other half of the cost equation, where e.g. Medicare is statutorily prohibited from negotiating prices with pharmaceutical companies).
Exactly. We don't have a cost problem, we have a supply and demand problem. Larger supply of doctors, nurses, generic drugs and competition will naturally drive down price.
All of the other mechanisms in place prevent that.
Don't forget collusion - my dentist apparently has lots of slack in her business, I am constantly getting calls to book an appointment. I'll let you guess whether she's offered more competitive pricing to increase her bookings....
Given that very few of her customers actually pay for their visits ... do you think that would help, or just be a huge obstacle in her negotiating with insurance providers ?
"one benefit of licensure requires that it confer monopoly rents upon physicians." pg. 58
There's a lot more in the book.