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Comment by checktheama | Hacker News Reader

I think you're probably right about the guild part.

The chronic shortage of doctors? Well, that's because they're perhaps the strongest guild. The AMA puts a cap on the supply of doctors (via # of residency slots they allow). The PAs were invented so that another class of workers could do the work of doctors without jeopardizing the doctors' pay or status.

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It appears that you are stating the exact same as the above comment, no?

I think the parent comment makes it seem like the guild is addressing a problem external to itself. My comment simply makes the causal link that the guild is solving a problem of its own making. A simpler solution would perhaps be to end/reduce the AMA monopoly. In that case, doctors would make less (as they do in the rest of the world), but the supply of doctors would be much higher.

I disagree - I think the comment is not implying the guild is addressing any problem at all and makes it quite clear that the guild is the cause of the problem.

They are not saying that doctors invented PAs to solve the chronic shortage, they're saying that doctors created the chronic shortage which necessitated policy intervention in the form of PAs.

I think you've just misread the comment and would find that it actually agrees strongly with what you said.

> The AMA puts a cap on the supply of doctors (via # of residency slots they allow)

This is factually untrue.[1]

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4978854/

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