Elizabeth Jack asks
"So here's my question: how can we reform the education system to emphasize its role as a certification process rather than a medium of knowledge transfer? And how do we do this in a way that makes it more accessible to everyone, rather than merely a rubber stamp that gatekeeps careers based on wealth?"
There are a plethora of laws and regulations that largely serve to protect established businesses or protect the salary of existing members of a politically powerful cartel. Eliminate these rentseeking laws, and you drastically lower the cost of entering the market for the poor.
For example, I would abolish all of the following barriers to entry in the medical field:
* medical licensure
* FDA
* prescription drug laws
* DEA
* patents
* Certificate of Need laws
* cross-state restrictions on insurance sales
* import bans / tariffs on drugs / medical supplies
But what about quack / incompetent doctors you may ask?
Earning a medical license means you once had enough knowledge to pass the exams. It doesn't mean you _currently_ know anything. Knowledge retention past exams is dismal across the board, no matter the discipline.
In order to keep their chops up, doctors must constantly update, refresh, and practice their skills.
Thus, if it were up to me, I'd like to see the creation of a non-profit that scored doctors based on "secret shoppers": real patients with real conditions who secretly evaluate their physicians, much like the secret shoppers used to evaluate retail stores.
Prior to treatment, the "secret shoppers" would be scored based on the severity of their condition by three randomly selected doctors.
Then they would be treated by a randomly selected physician (the one to be evaluated).
The treating physician's performance would then be scored afterward by those same doctors and the patient themselves.
The doctor would then get a score, based on their performance and scaled by the severity of the case. Would-be patients could see the score for each secret patient, as well as aggregates of their scores.
As I envision it, doctors would pay a fee to be evaluated (so that they could advertise their competence). Or perhaps the fee would be paid by insurance companies (in order to reduce their payouts for physician incompetence).
The medical care for secret patients and other costs of operation would be paid out of these fees.
"So here's my question: how can we reform the education system to emphasize its role as a certification process rather than a medium of knowledge transfer? And how do we do this in a way that makes it more accessible to everyone, rather than merely a rubber stamp that gatekeeps careers based on wealth?"
There are a plethora of laws and regulations that largely serve to protect established businesses or protect the salary of existing members of a politically powerful cartel. Eliminate these rentseeking laws, and you drastically lower the cost of entering the market for the poor.
For example, I would abolish all of the following barriers to entry in the medical field:
* medical licensure
* FDA
* prescription drug laws
* DEA
* patents
* Certificate of Need laws
* cross-state restrictions on insurance sales
* import bans / tariffs on drugs / medical supplies
But what about quack / incompetent doctors you may ask?
Earning a medical license means you once had enough knowledge to pass the exams. It doesn't mean you _currently_ know anything. Knowledge retention past exams is dismal across the board, no matter the discipline.
In order to keep their chops up, doctors must constantly update, refresh, and practice their skills.
Thus, if it were up to me, I'd like to see the creation of a non-profit that scored doctors based on "secret shoppers": real patients with real conditions who secretly evaluate their physicians, much like the secret shoppers used to evaluate retail stores.
Prior to treatment, the "secret shoppers" would be scored based on the severity of their condition by three randomly selected doctors.
Then they would be treated by a randomly selected physician (the one to be evaluated).
The treating physician's performance would then be scored afterward by those same doctors and the patient themselves.
The doctor would then get a score, based on their performance and scaled by the severity of the case. Would-be patients could see the score for each secret patient, as well as aggregates of their scores.
As I envision it, doctors would pay a fee to be evaluated (so that they could advertise their competence). Or perhaps the fee would be paid by insurance companies (in order to reduce their payouts for physician incompetence).
The medical care for secret patients and other costs of operation would be paid out of these fees.