> This is just wrong. The supply is absolutely artificially capped, particularly for positions like surgeons.

I feel like you don't understand the distinction about positions at universities for initial medical training vs. internship and residencies, which I believe I discussed fairly above.

see

> > Internship slots, in turn, are set by disparate government agencies. They've climbed, but probably not climbed enough.

"Disparate agencies" isn't great phrasing, though, as what I really mostly meant was "each province".

To start with, you’re overestimating the role of full fee paying university places, Australia doesn’t have provinces, and the intern year is not equivalent to an American internship - that’s the registrars, and there are fewer of those than internships. (This is the position you need to get in order to begin any specialty training, such as surgery. They are very explicitly managed and funded by the federal government. https://www.anao.gov.au/work/performance-audit/administratio...)

More generally, Australia does have states and territories, but the federation model is far more centralized than the US: for instance, public hospital funding is a shared pool coordinated by federal agreement. https://www.publichospitalfunding.gov.au/victoria-basis-nati... While the vast majority of internships are at public hospitals, the federal government also pays directly to create a relatively small number of internships at private hospitals.

But of course this is all largely irrelevant because about one third of doctors in Australia completed all of their training in another country, and were then awarded a visa based largely on their profession being listed as a national priority under the system managed by the federal government.