The AMA pushed BS since the late ‘60s that caused this.
They used fishy statistics to say that there would be a MD surplus if more med schools were built or expanded in the mid-70s.
Utter, complete BS that was nothing more then paycheck protection.
So now we have something like 25% of the MD population being foreign, usually from India. H1B docs for Chrissakes.
Any medical school will tell you they don’t know what it is that gets somebody in. They have thousands of applicants who actually qualify intellectually. So they have to sort through and look for “something special” or some government mandated discrimination they can apply to decide who gets in.
Try a supply side solution now. Just expand the med schools by ~ 30% and voila, lotsa docs. All home grown, and all qualified. Maybe they make less then some of the older crocodiles counting their millions. So what. It’s a job, and one that will pay well. No flakes from the Punjab needed.
And AI based triage? LPNs / PAs doing screening? Groovy. That’s the way to increase throughput before you see The Big Guy / Girl with the real MD. Make med care available to all, fast. And reasonable, maybe not cheap.
A supply side solution. Lop off some of the mega cash that Bitch and Biden are sending to their Ookrainian butt buddies and that will be more then enough.
It’s also not fair to us NP’s and mid levels.
I’m an NP and I had to run the office so many times while the doc was on his big overseas two week vacation ....and I get paid likely 1/10th of what he’s being paid. Not fair. No bonus, no nothing, with all of the responsibility and liability. I did get a Dunkin Donuts gift card, though. That was big.
Needless to say, I’ve left that practice and am onto other things, thankfully.
So, it’s either pay all docs the big bucks, or pay fewer docs to do the really big specialized stuff and let the mid levels do all the general work.
There were 88 medical schools in 1966. In 1976 there were 114 (+29%). Now there are 158.