[kenavi]

What difference is this compared to what happened in the US when the medical schools decide to limit applicants?

Are you referring to an earlier period in our history? I believe that the AMA enforced limits on medical schools, that's why a number of my contemporaries went abroad to medical school in the 1970s.

It was indeed a non-market restriction of trade.

I heard a speech by Sen. Lowell Weicker in the early 1990s, where he claimed credit for having gotten the "medical lobby" to have allowed increased medical school enrollment in the U.S., in return for an expansion of Medicare benefits that would of course benefit their constituents. I believe that this grand bargain would have taken place during the Nixon years.

[Chickensoup]

Many MDs are still trained overseas. I know three of them. No, there are still substantial school restrictions. ERGO This has fueled the rise of Nurse practitioners and Physician Assistants.