MASSDEVICE ON CALL — The law of supply and demand are among the most fundamental tenants of economics, and as applied to healthcare may suggest that an increase in the number of physicians in the U.S. would decrease the cost of the services they provide.
However, healthcare is an imperfect market and industry economists are still arguing about the practical implications of supply and demand in among physicians, Catherine Rampell writes in The New York Times column Economix.
One school of thought believes boosting the number of doctors would actually jack up healthcare costs. Because of competition for patients, doctors would end up prescribing more tests and drugs to offset losses, some say.
Another school of thought believes that this phenomenon, called physician-induced demand, already takes place and is successfully offset by insurance policies that reprimand extraneous tests as well as by patients who are wary of over-zealous doctors.
As Rampell writes, "conclusions are disputed" about the economics of the doctor shortage, "since the data are so messy."
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