Keeping doctor’s salaries high was the original, stated, explicit purpose of the AMA. That’s what licensing is all about: a barrier to entry to the marketplace, which those charged with keeping the barrier have a vested interest in maintaining.
Seems like they’re doing a good job of keeping up that barrier and keeping doctors’ salaries high.
Now is the time to address the issue that this is not healthy for America.
Personally I think the number of medical schools should be set at the number of QUALIFIED students who are rejected by med schools. Right now it’s sumthin like 8:1 qualified applicants are rejected. When we have sumthin like 2:1 rejection rate of QUALIFIED [I know I’m gonna have to repeat this in the future for someone: Q.U.A.L.I.F.I.E.D.] applicants, that is when we can stabilize the number of medical schools.
Not all of us need to see the highest bestest doctor in the world just because we got a tummy ache. When it really is diagnosed as pancreatic cancer, that’s when we need them superduper docs.