To be clear, I think you're right up to a certain point, but it makes some sense to be very elitist about who can practice in what you'd like to be the medical 'pride of the nation'. Now, scarcity in other regions is another matter, where it makes sense to relax standards. How much you relax the standard is a matter of how low you accept to go in terms of quality.

For example, see [1] where a general surgeon made an average of $118,689 in 1984 and a family practitioner $84,256. This would be $358k and $254k in 2024 dollars. Today in 2024 they make on average $423k and $272k respectively [2].

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4192917/ [2] https://www.whitecoatinvestor.com/how-much-do-doctors-make/

Cutting their salaries in half would have almost no perceivable impact on the cost of care.

https://www.ama-assn.org/about/research/trends-health-care-s...

Nursing care added another 4.3%, and other personal health care expenditures (dental, medical equipment, and other professional services) added another 16.5%, or about 2/3 of total costs when all taken together.

By the way, an average salary of $423K is pretty good, and a six month wait to see a specialist amounts to denial of medical care. Serious reform is needed.

All the rest of the logic you supplied yourself.

Since you seem intent on sticking words in my mouth, I don’t think doctor are necessarily paid too much, and don’t think limiting their salaries will substantially affect health care costs. I do think doctor salaries probably will go down if their ranks weren’t artificially limited, but society would benefit, and doctors might too with a reduced workload. In fact, the overall proportion of medical costs given to physician salaries will likely go up if their ranks weren’t limited, albeit with each individual doctor making less.