America’s medical schools do not train enough doctors, creating a growing shortage of quality physicians. This shortage is widely recognized and lamented, but the cause of the problem is often misdiagnosed. Observers from all ends of the political spectrum blame Congress, which “capped” subsidies for medical residencies in 1997. In reality, there are simply not enough U.S. medical school graduates.
Medical schools, not residencies, are the real bottleneck restricting the supply of quality physicians. After completing medical school, doctors are hired as residents, typically by hospitals, to complete the training that states require for licensure. But there have always been more residency positions in the U.S. than medical school graduates, and residency positions have expanded much more rapidly than medical school graduates.
Read more at the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal.