[evoloution]

"Doctors are part of a guild. They artificially limit the number of doctors available by capping the number of medical schools, which also allows the existing schools to crank costs to astronomical levels (“don’t worry, you’ll make enough to pay it back”)." - True (in principle). But even with so much filtering, I have encountered not so bright doctors practicing and it is not a pretty sight... Plus you have to consider the time investment, apart from money, there is lost time and opportunities. Take a typical cardiologist for example: 4 years undergrad + 1 year research or something else to beef up CV + 4 years medical school + 3 years of internal medicine + consider 1 year chief residency to beef up CV + 3 years cardiology fellowship. That's 14-16 years either getting in debt or being underpaid.

"One thing that would help is letting non-MD’s, such as nurses or physicians assistants, do more “doctor” things. Dentists, a similar profession, is going apeshit that states are trying to let specially licensed assistants (but non-DMDs) do slightly more advanced work like fill cavities.[0]" - That's were market forces are driving us anyway, it is happening. As long as you are OK with everyone being seen by a PA or NP... Most people though that support what you said kind of feel like this is "for the other people" but for themselves they "demand" to be seen by a doctor when they are seen by a PA or an NP. Don't get me wrong PAs and NPs are fine for 95% of everything that needs to be done but they simply lack the knowledge and the training to troubleshoot complicated problems and what makes it worse is that many times they cannot even detect that it is beyond them.

"The entire health system from top to bottom would benefit immensely from free market forces." - There is a free market for medical services in the upper bracket and doctors are making even more there.

In the end, perfect is the enemy of good...