Comment by sarchertech

If lack of physicians is leading to an increase in costs, you’d expect to see physicians capturing a large part of that increase. There are situations where that wouldn’t hold, but it requires moving away from the simplest explanation that fits the data.

We don’t have to extrapolate from physician compensation though. We know that providers per capita have increased, but costs have continued to skyrocket. Therefore a lack of providers is not the immediate cause of the increase.

In addition to increasing the number of providers, the scope of practice for non-physician providers has almost universally increased.

All of this doesn’t prove that increasing the number of physicians wouldn’t lower costs some amount, but it does show that the increases over the last 20-30 years requires some other explanation.