Comment by chongli
Board exams are fine. You can sit thousands of candidates for those. The issue is residency slots which are the main bottleneck. Why should a surgeon with 20 years of experience working in Mumbai be forced to become a resident alongside fresh-faced med school grads in the US? It’s a huge problem when it’s cheaper and safer to fly to India for surgery than to get the same surgery in the US (from a less experienced surgeon).
It’s the tyranny of the status quo. Milton Friedman was complaining about this more than 50 years ago.
"Why should a surgeon with 20 years of experience working in Mumbai be forced to become a resident alongside fresh-faced med school grads in the US?"
Perhaps you could have them in some accelerated program, but i think it makes a lot of sense to require doctors to train or prove themselves in the specific country/region using the standard practices, tools, etc customary there. I wouldn't want a US doctor operating on me in India since they're likely to make assumptions and recommendations for treatment that overlook local practices, resources, etc.