> Doctors are part of a guild. They artificially limit the number of doctors available by capping the number of medical schools
They do not. You may be confusing the AMA (which less than 25% of doctors even belong to) with the AAMC. The latter does cap the number of medical school positions nationwide, but they've also made a concerted effort over the last ten years to increase that number steadily.
But even if they eliminated that cap entirely, it wouldn't matter, because the number of medical school slots isn't a bottleneck for the number of practicing physicians. The number of residency slots is, and the funding gap for that comes from Medicare, which is responsible for funding them.
Unless more residency programs are funded, increasing the number of medical school positions would simply increase the number of people who have medical school debt and aren't licensed or trained to practice medicine, which would be even worse,
> which also allows the existing schools to crank costs to astronomical levels (“don’t worry, you’ll make enough to pay it back”).
Hardly - in fact, there's already been significant downward pressure on these, because the debt level is already at the tipping point. Today, the typical person who enters medical school can expect to pay off their medical school debt in their 40s. That level of debt load is already having a negative impact on qualifications for medical school applicants (who wants to be past child-bearing age by the time they've paid off their debt, when they can just go into another better-paying field without any of that)?
They do not. You may be confusing the AMA (which less than 25% of doctors even belong to) with the AAMC. The latter does cap the number of medical school positions nationwide, but they've also made a concerted effort over the last ten years to increase that number steadily.
But even if they eliminated that cap entirely, it wouldn't matter, because the number of medical school slots isn't a bottleneck for the number of practicing physicians. The number of residency slots is, and the funding gap for that comes from Medicare, which is responsible for funding them.
Unless more residency programs are funded, increasing the number of medical school positions would simply increase the number of people who have medical school debt and aren't licensed or trained to practice medicine, which would be even worse,
> which also allows the existing schools to crank costs to astronomical levels (“don’t worry, you’ll make enough to pay it back”).
Hardly - in fact, there's already been significant downward pressure on these, because the debt level is already at the tipping point. Today, the typical person who enters medical school can expect to pay off their medical school debt in their 40s. That level of debt load is already having a negative impact on qualifications for medical school applicants (who wants to be past child-bearing age by the time they've paid off their debt, when they can just go into another better-paying field without any of that)?