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Notes -
I think that this can not be reasonably discussed without mentioning student debt and artificial constraints on education supply.
In Germany, medicine are among the most favorite subjects to study. To be able to start to study directly after the 12th grade in school, you need to be in the top 10% of students or so, because there are not enough places in the university programs for everyone who is interested. Obviously there are people who will make fine physicians who were not in the top 10% of students (and indeed some of them are admitted after a waiting period). If instead you admitted anyone who you thought had a reasonable chance to pass the final exam, you would have tremendously increase the supply of physicians in half a decade, decreasing wages. I think this is exactly why this is not done.
In the US, I feel that it is linked to student debt. Doctors are expensive because studying medicine is expensive, because universities mostly do not compete on price but on amenities.
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