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Notes -
I don't think that's the case.
Good call! I hadn't made this connection, myself, though now I see that there are quite a few works making that comparison as well. I was curious about why we would have the transition from guilds->unions->boards, and it seems that the leading hypothesis for the two arrows are the Industrial Revolution and the transition to a service economy. That is, in the guild days, there was mostly a patchwork of small, independent producers, who banded together to rent-seek. As mass production took off, the economics were in favor of larger firms (now you could build cars and sell a bunch of them across the nation or internationally) where workers were mostly trained in one specific task on an assembly line, so guilds started to fall, while unions began to rise. Then, as we've transitioned toward services, they're again more of a patchwork of small, independent providers, who, unsurprisingly, band together to rent-seek.
Medicine is an especially egregious case, as we've seen significant consolidation in that sector. It's less about small independent providers, as the doctors here are apt to point out that larger conglomerates are taking over and many doctors are now employees of a hospital system rather than just running their own little business. So I'm not surprised that a brief search indicates that doctors' unions are significantly on the rise. Of course, they don't have the same sort of mass production scale, as they are still fundamentally a service product rather than a good, so I think it's less likely that the guild power of licensing is going to disappear to any meaningful degree, especially not in comparison to the historical decline in guild power in the good production arena. Instead, we're going to get the worst of both worlds - obscenely licensed and unionized. The academic papers I've found say that they have empirical evidence that these schemes do intersect and provide the most rent-seeking. It's like the anti-Reece's peanut butter cup - two awful tastes that taste awful together. I had sort of thought that the medical industry was reaching a breaking point and that changes would have to occur... but now, I'm sort of getting the feeling that it's going to get a whole lot worse before there's any hope that it'll get any better.
My prediction for failure mode of us healthcare;
Good doctors (most, not all) become too frustrated with the insurance regime and become cash only concierge providers for the wealthy.
The surging demand paired with vanishing supply for those who cannot afford out of pocket healthcare creates healthcare gridlock (look at the British NHS for an example of this). No one can get seen in a timely manner, the care that is provided is perfunctory, follow up visits are non-existent.
Amateur and grey market pharmacology takes off and we see a spike in accidental overdose deaths. These stats, however, are probably laundered by calling some of them suicides, some of them related to pre-existing conditions, or even more blatant cooking of the books.
Eventually, Federal laws do change for "low level" or "routine" medical care; You can do visit local clinics to get band-aids and aspirin and not have to get it from a doctor, but some sort of glorified EMT. This expands to cover most types of prescription drugs as well.
Medical insurers become financially insolvent gradually as the healthy and wealthy drop out of the system. Eventually, some tech company figures out how to create non-insurance-insurance wherein they can deny you based on risk factors (like insurance used to work). The work around is that they aren't technically insurance, but function as some sort of mutual liquidity market (you're, very technically speaking, exchange mutual contracts with other individuals to help defer costs of medical care at an undetermined date in the future, the tech company in the middle just provides a digital marketplace ... something along those lines).
All of the Americans who want health insurance have it (Obamacare: Hooray!) but all of the Americans who have health insurance cannot actually see a decent doctor in any timeperiod less than 1 - 2 years. Most simply rely on long term prescription drugs for pain management and placebo effect.
Americans without healthcare (and without independent wealth) create this wholly new side industry of non-insurance-insurance and, in so doing, create new demand for medical care provided by doctors, perhaps, not from this country originally - or ever (i.e. medical tourism partially or fully covered by the not-insurance-insurance).
People (not yet doctors) see that they can pursue medical careers without going to the traditional medical schools or passing boards. A whole new shadow-doctor industry staffs up. After 5 - 10 years of this group demonstrating not only equal, but superior health outcomes, the traditional Medical School cartel is finally broken up.
I think this takes about 20 years, starting roughly the time the Social Security Trust becomes insolvent.
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