[alistairSH]

The US only accepts doctors who went to Canadian or American medical schools.

That's absolutely not true. Foreign medical graduates do have to take the US board exams, complete a US-based residency, and possibly take additional courses to fill educational gaps, but they absolutely can practice in the US with a foreign medical degree.

[JamesBarney]

-> complete a US-based residency

This is the kicker. There are incredibly difficult to get, they are incredibly stressful, and it's another 3-5 years of your life.

If you allowed any non-us developers to practice in the US but you made them work a 5 year 80hr/week internship for 1/6th of what professional developers made first, that basically bans non-us developers from writing code in the U.S.

[alistairSH]

Absolutely. And that's due to AMA lobbying in the 90s. It doesn't have anything much to do with stringency of US medical licensing or ensuring quality and everything to do with existing MDs protecting their lucrative practices.

[phobosanomaly]

Practicing medicine must be lucrative because it costs an individual student around $240,000 in tuition for the M.D. itself, excluding cost of living.

Doctors are made out to be predatory vultures, but unless they come from money they must undergo massive debt burdens that they are not able to even begin paying down the principal on until they're well-into their thirties. Imagine the feeling of taking out half-a-million dollars in student loans to cover both undergrad, and graduate-level training. After that look forward to your 80-hours a week of residency making below hourly minimum wage. [1]

Make medical school free, and you'll have people lining up the door to practice for low-cost. Make it half-a-million pay-to-play, and you'll have people desperately clawing their way out of debt so that some day they can have a family and own a home after a decade of hellish training.

Cut the docs some slack. They're taking on unimaginable debt burdens for a job that often isn't in the same universe of cushiness as something at FAANG (inspecting that anal fissure in the ED at 3am with perks including, well, hospital food), but involves an tremendous service to society.

[1] https://www.mdlinx.com/physiciansense/is-it-better-to-be-a-d...

[signal11]

Here's an article that describes the pathway by which foreign doctors can get a medical license in the US: https://www.voanews.com/student-union/how-indian-doctors-get...

In brief, they have to sit the MLE (medical licensing exams), but the real hurdle is getting into a US-based residency program beforehand. In practice, this means only the best candidates tend to make it.