[syki]

I said there was a moral aspect to taking medical talent from poor countries. You say that you don’t completely disagree with this. So it sounds like you too believe there is a moral aspect to this issue. Great.

I'm not willing to condemn some poor Pakistani doctor to a life much less comfortable than he could enjoy here AND force US citizens to pay extremely high prices for medical care to protect the incomes of US doctors. If you are, cool.

You assume that I’m opposed to giving licensed doctors in other countries an exemption to going through a U.S. residency program in order to practice in the U.S. You are making assumptions that are not justified by what I have written. There are at times valid reasons to restrict medical talent from easily leaving one country to another and there are times where there aren’t really any valid reasons for doing this. I was responding to your statement, “there are no valid reasons….”

Your argument here is way too black/white given the complexity of the issues involved. Thinking that “…condemning Pakistani doctors…” and “…force U.S. citizens to pay more” are the only or are necessary outcomes to not allowing Pakistani doctors to practice medicine in the U.S. without going through a U.S. residency program is not correct.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/24695058

EDIT: Modified to be less vituperative.

[vsskanth]

> There is actually a valid reason to make it hard for doctors to move from one country to another. Training doctors is time consuming and expensive. There is a moral aspect to luring doctors trained in poor countries to rich countries.

There might be a reason for the home countries to not want their trained doctors to leave considering the money spent training them. Some of them do have agreements for the trained doctors to work for a few years in return for the subsidy. That's for the home country and the student to decide.

However the main economic argument here is there's no reason the US should force them through residency again to practice, instead of just directly allowing them to practice after some vetting (USMLE whatever) and reap the benefits of fulfilling pent up demand, lowering healthcare costs and improved access.

I have point out here that "We shouldn't steal talent from poor countries" as a moral argument is a common trope amongst those pushing for immigration restrictions to limit competition to themselves. People are considered free and aren't owned by their countries. Its an understandable argument but I wouldn't pass it on as beneficial to the US or the people (it's not).