Although I agree with you on a distaste for the foolishness of central planning, lLet me provide an alternative perspective.
A huge proportion of US physicians are already mediocre; a shocking number are bad. (Source: I am a physician.) Given this, I am concerned that further relaxation of standards in an effort to train more doctors won't lead to better outcomes.
> Given this, I am concerned that further relaxation of standards in an effort to train more doctors won't lead to better outcomes.
The high standards certainly prevent people who are unable to meet the standars from practicing medicine, but they also prevent people who are able to but see the standards as unreasonably onerous and pursue something else. Some of those could have been great doctors but looked at the steps and said nope, I'm not going to go to med school, then hope I can get a residency, in which case I get to have a hellish schedule and little autonomy for at least three years, and then probably a hellish schedule and little autonomy for many more years.
Not making American doctors do 4-years of an undergraduate "premed" degree will not meaningfully lower standards. Nor will creating more residency slots.
We don't need better outcomes. We will happily take the existing outcomes but cheaper.
> the "premed" undergraduate degree (which doesn't exist)
Yes there's no undergraduate major named "premed". There's no need to be pedantic. But US medical schools generally require a 4-year undergraduate degree (BA or BS) and certain coursework (biology and chemistry, among others). [1][2]
> will somehow lead to reduced healthcare costs
And yes, I'm saying that if it takes a couple years less to train a doctor - by letting them go directly to medical school after high school and doing the prereq coursework there over maybe 5.5-6 years instead of the current 4 - that will lead to lower healthcare costs. Not sure why that's so controversial of a statement. It's simple supply and demand.
> And yes, I'm saying that if it takes a couple years less to train a doctor - by letting them go directly to medical school after high school and doing the prereq coursework there over maybe 5.5-6 years instead of the current 4 - that will lead to lower healthcare costs. Not sure why that's so controversial of a statement. It's simple supply and demand.
It's "controversial" because you are conflating two issues.
Shortening the path will at most lead to a very minor supply increase at the time it is implemented; the gains don't compound. Without increasing the total number of admission spots (or more critically, residency slots), the overall supply will not be meaningfully increased.
Removing a prerequisite (bachelor's degree; which I point out in another comment is not actually required at many schools) is generally unrelated to the supply of US physicians and this is why you're getting pushback.
Yes you have to remove the other bottlenecks in the system too (I talked about residency spots in another comment). This seems like an easy win without any accusations of lowering standards.
> the gains don't compound
You give doctors, on average, an additional 2 years of their life to practice medicine instead of spending them in college on a pointless degree (not to mention, slightly lower college debt when starting out). Multiply that over however many doctors we graduate every year, and it'll add up over time. It's not "compounding" in the mathematical sense of the word, obviously. If you assume that a medical career is about 35 years, that's like an 8% increase in available doctor-years over 35 years (or something like that - the math is a bit handwavy). Without doing literally anything else.
I saw your other comment about degree requirements and I'll respond here. In addition to the consulting website, I also looked at Johns Hopkins and they do have a degree requirement. Thanks for providing that counter-example. I wasn't aware and I'll update my understanding of this.
However, your own source said "a baccalaureate degree...is strongly preferred". So it has to be asked - how many non bachelor's degree holders actually get into med school?
Every US-trained doctor I've had has gotten a bachelor's degree (I read bios when they're available). The ones that don't were foreign-trained. If the number of med school applicants greatly exceeds the spots, I'd imagine nearly all serious applicants are going to get a bachelor's degree to improve their chances. It sounds like you're a doctor - what proportion of people in your class got in without a bachelor's degree?
It’s unclear to me how removing the requirement for an undergraduate degree (side note, it is not actually required at many or most US medical schools) will lower healthcare costs.
> it is not actually required at many or most US medical schools
Source for this? That's surprising to me and a brief Google search tells me the exact opposite.[1]
You really don't understand how reducing the number of years it takes to train a doctor, after they complete high school, will lower healthcare costs? Are you unfamiliar with supply and demand, or the relationship between the cost of production and pricing?
> Every U.S. medical school requires the completion of a four-year degree from an accredited college or university.
However, if we look at the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine as just a single example [1] we see the following:
> "A baccalaureate degree is not required but is strongly preferred by the Admissions Committee."
Given that your reference, "Shemmassian Consulting", appears to be low-quality given that it makes categorically false statements, I won't bother to search for other schools. Suffice it to say that I am aware of quite a few, including my own, that do not require 4-year bachelor's degrees.
Finally, I understand supply-and-demand quite well, and I agree that increasing the supply of licensed US physicians may decrease healthcare costs (but it may not, as excess dollars in the system likely will be vacuumed up by administrators). However, this discussion is about decreasing entrance requirements to medical school, which is completely orthogonal.
A huge proportion of US physicians are already mediocre; a shocking number are bad. (Source: I am a physician.) Given this, I am concerned that further relaxation of standards in an effort to train more doctors won't lead to better outcomes.