How USA Tribalism Makes Health Care far more Expensive

Unlike Norway and numerous other advanced countries, the USA has always been stuck in the primordial soup of economic tribalism. By that I mean that US individuals have (almost from day one of the Republic) frequently formed into formal private organizations that engage in such things as public relations, licensing (in conjunction with Government) and lobbying of the federal government and all the state governments to make it more difficult for young people to get the credentials needed to get a license and to join their group.

Why do the US tribal occupational/industrial organizations (like the AMA) support making it more difficult to become, for example, a doctor and to join them? The biggest reason is that by inducing the Government to put up ever increasing barriers to entry, these organizations, among other things, artificially increase their own incomes and also their own clout. That is Economics 101: artificially keep the supply down and the price stays higher than it really should be.

Right of center organizations such as the AMA actually do not give a damn about US health care in general, from the vantage point of the overall public good. Nor does the AMA really care whether the ordinary US citizen has good health care or not, except to the extent of the potential that this and similar issues might enrich their members further. The AMA and similar US organizations are motivated by money and money only.

Norway and similar (mostly Western European) countries do of course have private industrial and occupational organizations, but these entities generally don't act in the greedy and anti-public good way that the US versions do.

Partly as a result of the differing attitude and motivations of these "gatekeeper" organizations, Norway has many more doctors per capita than does the United States, which in turn makes the Norway single payer system even more effective and efficient than it would be if the number of Norwegian doctors was artificially kept down like it is in the US.

Another reason why Norway has more doctors though is that the Government there recognizes doctors and health care in general as a public, common good, so the heavy subsidy of education in Norway extends up to the level of medical school. Whereas in the United States, medical school is so expensive and the economy is so bad that even high income doctors, burdened by among other things huge student loans, high malpractice premiums, and by the need to hire numerous paper pushers to meet all the requirements of their health insurance company overlords, are sometimes forced to declare bankruptcy!