Those things are for the most part already subject to free market forces. You can do a little bit to improve in those areas, like abolish the remaining vestiges of certificate of need legislation, etc. But for the most part, you're not going to be able to achieve a better allocation of resources by focusing on that.
The bottleneck is in the area of physician services and other healthcare technicians. When you've got a bottleneck like that, it forces a complete distortion of the allocation of all other resources. That's largely why you see what appears to be uneconomic use of resources in those other areas. You've got vast quantities of surplus equipment, for example, because a highly paid physician cannot simply stand around while an orderly runs down the hall to get the needed equipment from another wing of the hospital.
Also, I think you need to realize that you can't just look at the charges that the hospital puts on the bill to determine how much it costs to use a particular piece of equipment. The hospital charges $10 for a cotton ball. But that is just their way of allocating the cost of the operation on the bill. It doesn't mean they actually paid $10 for that cotton ball. If the insurance company told them that they could not charge $10 for a cotton ball, then they would rewrite the bill, and the $10 would be allocated to something else.
We already supplement our medical school graduates of around 17,000 a year with foreign trained doctors. Most of our major big city hospitals couldn't operate without them. We are also bringing in foreign trained nurses under J-1 visas. The problem isn't an overall shortage of doctors, but how they are distributed geographically and in what specialties.
The foreign born account for 25.2 percent of all physicians; 17 percent of nursing, psychiatric and home health aides; 15.8 percent of clinical laboratory technicians; 14.8 percent of pharmacists; and 11.5 percent of registered nurses.
Also, I think you need to realize that you can't just look at the charges that the hospital puts on the bill to determine how much it costs to use a particular piece of equipment. The hospital charges $10 for a cotton ball. But that is just their way of allocating the cost of the operation on the bill. It doesn't mean they actually paid $10 for that cotton ball. If the insurance company told them that they could not charge $10 for a cotton ball, then they would rewrite the bill, and the $10 would be allocated to something else.
You make my point. Hospital costs are a major portion of health care costs. More doctors are not going to reduce those costs, which are also inflated due to the requirment to treat the uninsured regardless of their ability to pay. Those costs are passed on to the consumers who can pay.