If we're going to ignore the enumerated powers of Congress and let them legislate something completely different, here's my proposal: Let's draft every medical professional into public service. We can set them up as part of one of the existing branches of the military or possibly create a new branch of the military for this purpose. The reason I would want to do this as part of the military is that doing so allows for penalties for those who would choose to opt out. Simply setting up a new civilian bureaucracy just wouldn't work quite as well. If this were just another government job, choosing to retire early or go into another line of work would be a perfectly natural option. We couldn't really allow that, however, as we would need to be able to provide guarantees of service.
Another benefit of the military option is that it would allow us to keep costs down. As has been noted elsewhere, the average Federal salary is significantly higher than the average private salary. Salaries for doctors-as-civil-servants would likely be fairly high, but salaries for doctors-as-military could be held lower. They certainly wouldn't all be generals. I can't imagine why they shouldn't all be maintained at the level of privates. Paying them as such would help contain costs.
And yes, I know, this is a completely ludicrous suggestion (and not fully developed -- how do you replenish the supply of doctors over time, etc.?) But if we're going to scrap the system we have just for the sake of trying something completely different, then why not try this? It's certainly completely different.
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