> Is there a rent seeking problem in the medical and dental fields too?
It certainly is. It's just that the crux of this article is that occupational licensing for low or medium skilled trades is inherently problematic rent-seeking, whereas the requirement for a license to practice medicine or dentistry isn't itself a problem, it's the artificial limiting of those who can get the license that presents a problem.
In Australia within a few visits to the dentist the cost could easily start going over $5000. I am hearing more and more stories of people going overseas to do dental work - and a lot of these I would say reasonably well off people - upper middle class.
Considering pretty high educated professionals immigration numbers, it is surprising dental costs staying so high (which is not the case with other professions).
That's partly due to the lack of any regulation requiring transparency in pricing or even agreement on best practices. I recently tried looking at some dental work and it's very difficult to even figure out if the different quotes cover the same work. It's bullshit.
Huh, what country out of curiosity. I've had dental services from several large providers in the centeral US and they have all been able to provide me with itemized estimates before any work was begun.
While dentistry is conspicuously absent from government healthcare assistance in Australia, $5000 for dental work for a mere few visits means pretty serious issues. I wouldn't classify it as easily going over $5k, though it still isn't exactly cheap.
(I had a bodgy root canal reworked over 3 visits for $3k and a tooth extracted and bone abcess cleaned out under general for ~$1500 all up, including initial consultations. I didn't hunt around for a cheaper option, since that was how I got the bad root canal in the first place...)
But there's 2 major problems with forcing medical practitioners into a market:
1) at the time you need treatment, you may not have any choice (or you may be in pain, or ...). So expect to see free root canals with $10k pain relief "option". Or have "normal" medicine (e.g. mild ear pain) priced into the ground and get gouged on emergency procedures (e.g. acute inner ear pain).
2) it is somewhere between very hard and impossible for normal people to see the quality of medical treatment. Given what can happen with bad quality medical treatment ... I find this a very scary prospect.
"Cutting hair" is not an intrinsic, unchangeable aspect that one has no control over. If the wage is not high enough, do something else. Then the wage will rise to the point where the people who are doing it are satisfied with what they make. That's how it's supposed to work.
if you want to keep up wages, then why artificially inflate the price of going into business (which just prevents potential entrants from offering a better product than incumbents) when you can instead.. artificially inflate wages directly with a higher minimum?
Minimum wage of $12 or $15 is great, but in many places still not a true middle class wage, especially for a head of household. But, still it's a worthwhile law to put on the books and it does help entry level workers and others.
On top of that, union wages are great for those who are in them and actually have enough work to be full time.
In addition, to address another group in society, we can empower service providers who are small business owners with state licensing boards to help them control their market segment and truly attain durable middle class living standards.
What's not to love is that money doesn't come from nowhere.
So if we set up service providers with a way to prevent new entrants into the market, what that means is that they get monopoly-like control over pricing (because the simplest mechanism for fighting that is new market entrants) and then that means that everyone overpays for their services. Including the people who now discover that their $12 or $15 wage is still not enough.
Or put another way, the technical term for "small business owners who control their market segment" is "cartel"...
It certainly is. It's just that the crux of this article is that occupational licensing for low or medium skilled trades is inherently problematic rent-seeking, whereas the requirement for a license to practice medicine or dentistry isn't itself a problem, it's the artificial limiting of those who can get the license that presents a problem.