You’ve mentioned this a couple of times in this post, about the idea that US taxpayers don’t care about where their doctors come from.

As someone who has practiced in a couple different places, especially rural America, I can absolutely assure you that a nontrivial part of the US population actually cares.

To be clear, it’s because a nontrivial number of American taxpayers are racist or xenophobic. And I’m in no way condoning those beliefs.

It’s important to be aware that those attitudes exist, though, because as long as residency funding is tied to federal funding, any attempt to change that system is going to be subject to political whims— and a large portion of the country would absolutely favor “protectionism” of American medical grads, meritocracy be damned.