Just like a scarcity of doctors is good for doctors, but bad for patients.
If the USA had only one doctor, we would't magically be able to treat everyone by using the one doctor "more efficiently", rather only the super rich would get treatment.
So not all bad.
The value of the programmers is equal to all the people their programs replace, but yet, they are paid less than a single one of the individuals they replace.
Our society doesn't properly value programmers. If it did, there wouldn't be an H1-B issue. There are more Americans who want to be doctors than America will legally allow to exist. There's no cap on how many programmers there can be, yet America throws its hands up in the air wondering why.
The answer is obvious: America doesn't value programmers appropriately.
You can't say, "We can't afford to pay what programmers are worth." How about pay sales people less. Why do sales people get 30% commissions? Why do CEO's get millions?
The only real solution to the problem is to properly value the work and pay for it.
This is known as 'teleradiology' ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleradiology )