Highschool in the uk ends at 16, you graduate with GCSEs. After this there are 2 extra years of education (compulsory in England), you start university at 18 (at the youngest).
Medical schools are competitive and require strong a-level results, typically 3 As (the second highest grade, after A*) [0]. It's a 4 year degree, you then go onto train for another 5 years as a junior doctor.
There is a _lot_ of training for UK doctors.
[0] https://www.manchester.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/courses/202...
[1] https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles/doctors/train...
Note that the US education system is more expensive though, so becoming a doctor costs more.
I don't think either is necessarily the case - he isn't saying it's easy to become a doctor in the UK, he's saying it's easier than in the US, and that's sort of true, if not by all that much.
In the US you also start university at 18 - med school is a 4 year degree you must have completed your undergraduate degree to begin, then you go on to train for 3-7 years as a resident, depending on specialization. Then maybe more for a fellowship.
That said, I've got both doctors trained in the UK and in the US in my immediate family, I don't really see much of a distinction in difficulty of training to be honest but I'm not a doctor myself so what do I know.
This is also a proportion of students who take A levels which is already filtering down to about 38% of the population in that age group (766k 18 year olds in U.K. so about 643k in England of which about 250k take at least one A level.)
So in a normal year that 12.3% of A level students getting 3 A’s is only 4.8% of the age cohort.
Edit: I should add that medicine is about the hardest subject to get into in U.K. (other than vet med which has so few places) and one of the only ones where they expect you to demonstrate suitability beyond academic performance, e.g. work experience in a caring setting. (Source: shared a house with a med student in undergrad.)
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.
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.
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.
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...
This is factually incorrect. There are tons of doctors that graduated from European, Indian and Chinese medical schools. To practice medicine in the USA they need to pass the ECFMG tests (US graduates take similar USMLE tests) and then complete medical residency. The last part is the hardest, for the medical residency admission offices are routinely discriminating against the foreign medical graduates.
It's much easier for an us citizen anyway as it is easier for an employee.
Do you have sources which shows your argument?