I’m all for the free market system, but we don’t let market forces determine the number of physicians who are practicing—obviously many more people would go to medical school if space were available. Instead of market forces, we let organizations like the AMA have an influential role in determining the number of doctors, since every medical school must be approved by the AMA to be certified. There are those who say that the AMA has a vested interest in keeping the supply of doctors low.
As a result, we have a situation where in my city of 500,000 people it takes a month to get in to see an orthopedic surgeon, and the city council must pay a neurologist $2,000 a night just to be available to take emergency calls.
Another problem is that over 50% of medical school students are now female - and studies have shown that female doctors work on average about 60% of the hours of their male colegues over their professional lifetime so you have to train almost 2 females for every male to get the same lifetime production.
Specialization is also a problem as students are not stupid and quickly realize that the specialists make about twice what a generalist makes so we are seeing a proliferation of less-qualified “physician extenders” in essence practicing medicine - dumbing down the profession. Instead of college, med. school and three or more years of residency for physicians, we now promote PA’s who have little actually hands on training with diagnosis/treatment skills!
Kind of like letting the student pilot who just soloed fly you and your family to Europe in a 767!