> The original claim you were responding to was that a doctors guild artificially limits the number of doctors available by capping the number of medical school

> The original claim you were responding to was that a doctors guild artificially limits the number of doctors available by capping the number of medical schools, the implication being that it leads to higher a demand for doctors and thus higher prices. That's a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of economics, then. Capping the number of medical schools can't cause higher demand for doctors. It can restrict the supply, which means that the prices will be higher, but it doesn't affect demand at all. > Granted that it's a lack of residencies and not medical schools that creates the demand, is creating artificial demand not a reason why hospitals might willingly refuse to do something that's clearly profitable for them? Even if this premise were correct: why would hospitals refuse to do something that's profitable for them, just so that they could pay more in expenses (salaries) in the long run?