Ha! Is Mankiw trying to push some form of a "micro" Wage-Push theory of medical price inflation?

Good grief, will these fallacies NEVER die?

If I'm not mistaken, Milton Friedman wrote his dissertation on this.

Where I live, it seems every doctor and dentist is foreign born.

Russell Roberts said: "[the] underlying forces that cause higher total spending in the United States relative to the rest of the world [is] —an increase in the demand for medicine driven by third party payments–governmental and private (with the latter tax-subsidized by government)."

But the rest of the developed world (as Mankiw notes) spends less on health care. All this while the rest of the developed world has higher levels of third party payments (mostly by government).

Thus it is Russell Roberts' post, not Greg Mankiw, that fails the test of rational argumentation.

I wonder how actual living wage would compare.

(Of course most doctors are still well off, so you don't hear them complain much about their wages).

I don't disagree with this statement. But how much does it help explain why doctor's fees in the US (and even spending on healthcare generally) are higher relative to the rest of the world? Don't most countries have similar licensing/accreditation bodies and similar barriers that don't allow foreign doctors to practice easily? Do we know whether such accreditation bodies ensure a smaller supply of doctors in the US (compared to similar bodies in other countries) or that barriers for foreign doctors are stronger in the US?