Billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg’s $1 billion gift to Johns Hopkins Medical School in July has brought renewed attention to the doctor shortage in the United States and the role of clinical training programs for medical school graduates.
“In the wake of the pandemic, Congress passed legislation funding 1,000 new graduate medical education (GME) residencies, but no more than 200 positions a year for five years,” said Merrill Matthews, Ph.D., a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation. “A bill last year would have increased the number again, but it hasn’t passed.”
Bloomberg’s gift has been seen as a means to alleviate the nation’s doctor shortage. Without adequate clinical training programs, “free medical school” may not make a difference, says Matthews.
“The government almost always underfunds such programs and is late when it does fund them,” said Matthews.
Government to Blame?
It is a myth to assume Congress is to blame for a shortage of places in clinical training programs, says Jay Green, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation and previously a distinguished professor and head of the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas. Physician organizations are the real culprits, Green says.
“The number of clinical training opportunities for doctors—residencies—significantly exceeds the number of graduates of U.S. medical schools,” said Green. “It is simply false that there is a residency shortage created by a lack of congressional funding for more residencies. In addition, the number of residencies has been growing more rapidly over the last several decades than the number of U.S. medical school graduates.”
Green documented his claim in a May 13, 2024 report, “Why Don’t U.S. Medical Schools Produce More Doctors?”
“The myth of a residency shortage is promoted by the American Medical Association (AMA) and Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) to deflect criticism of them for a doctor shortage caused by their reluctance to approve new and expanded medical schools in the United States,” Green told Health Care News.
“In addition, if we want to understand why medical school is so expensive, a big part of that is the tight cartel that the AMA and AAMC maintain over the supply of medical education,” said Green. “Given how the number of medical school applicants has been growing much more than the number of spots in medical school, that tight supply allows them to raise the price of tuition more sharply.”
If the AMA and AAMC allowed more medical school spots, medical school tuition prices would drop, says Green. Students pay or borrow more than $268,476 on average to obtain their medical degrees.
Kenneth Artz (KApublishing@gmx.com) writes from Tyler, Texas.
Internet info:
Jay Green, “Why Don’t U.S. Medical Schools Produce More Doctors,” The Heritage Foundation, May 24, 2024, https://www.heritage.org/education/report/why-dont-us-medical-schools-produce-more-doctors