“Foreign-Trained Physicians and Health Care in the United States”, 1979 ():
[Summary by Michael F. Cannon: “Shirley Viola Svorny entered the world in Los Angeles and earned her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles.]
This dissertation considers the effect on consumers of the free migration of foreign-trained physicians to the United States. It attempts to explain why US policymakers diverged from their usual policy to allow unrestricted migration 1956–24198044ya.
A model of the market for physician services explains the variation in the employment of foreign medical graduates (FMGs) across states in response to differing demands for lower quality physician services. The results suggest that the cost of care in hospital and long-term care facilities will be affected by a reduction in the flow of FMGs to the United States.
Study of the value of physician migration to consumer welfare in the late 1960s and early 1970s suggests that FMGs were used to alleviate what would otherwise have been a tight situation in the market for physician services in the United States.
An attempt is made to substantiate a theory of consumer/physician/government interaction that would explain why restrictions on physician migration were dropped in 1965 and reinstated with the Health Professions Educational Assistance Act of 1976.
This dissertation considers the effect on consumer well-being of the free migration of foreign-trained physicians to the United States, It also attempts to explain why US policymakers diverged from their usual policy to allow unrestricted migration 1965–15198044ya.
First, a model of the market for physician services is presented in Chapter 2 that explains the variation in the employment of foreign medical graduates (FMGs) across states as a response to cross-sectional variations in the demand for lower quality physician services. Empirical verification of this model suggests that quality determination costs are not so high as to make FMGs and US Medical Graduates (USMGs) indistinguishable to consumers, It is argued that this implies that physician migration may have a positive effect on aggregate consumer welfare. In particular, the empirical results suggest that, all else equal, the cost of care in hospital and long-term care facilities will be substantially affected by a reduction in the flow of FMGs to the United States.
The discussion of Chapter 3 of this paper also focuses on the role of FMGs and consumer welfare, but from a different point of view. Calculations of the value of physician migration to consumer welfare in the late 1960s and early 1970s suggest that FMGs were used to alleviate what would have otherwise been a “tight” situation in the market for physician services in the United States. Basically, Chapter 3 is an attempt to substantiate a theory of consumer/physician/government interaction that explains why restrictions on physician migration were dropped in 1965 and reinstated with the Health Professions Educational Assistance Act of 1976.