The US government interferes to an insane degree with almost every branch of health care except for plastic surgery, which it still slightly regulates, but to a far lesser degree than the other fields. There is no large welfare program that drives up consumer prices, and there is no insurance mandate that stops consumers from shopping around for the best price.
Chart source
This is what my grandmother was talking about in her lecture on why I should go into Cosmetics. It isn’t highly regulated because the bulk of the money made by Plastic Surgeons come from vanity and not trauma/disfigurement surgeries; thus, the government can’t really use “the common good” as a reason to regulate it. Government should get out of regulating healthcare altogether, as there is no reason why the price of health services should keep rising higher and higher due to these regulations and welfare-type programs; some necessary procedures (and by that, I don’t just mean surgical procedures) are now way harder to finance than cosmetic surgeries, which are seen as luxuries that insurance companies don’t even cover. There’s something off there.
PS: Not becoming a plastic surgeon ever. Neurology/neurosurgery is where it’s at for me.
