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Comment by opportune | Hacker News Reader

Yep. The AMA/AAMC is essentially screwing the rest of the US so that they can keep doctors' salaries artificially high. There are tons of medical school applicants who get rejected every year, and not because they can't become doctors, but because medical school sizes have remained constant while the country's population (and demand for healthcare) has increased drastically.

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My wife recently completed her residency. She has $370,000 in student loans. In order to pay off the loans she needs a high salary. The high salary doesn't go away once the school loans are paid off. It'd make a whole lot more sense for the country to just pay for higher education upfront. We'd be fine with her making half her salary and have the loans forgiven. It'd be much cheaper for society to do this.

Indiana, and other states, have programs that will pay for your medical degree provided you go to an in-state institution and work with the under served. Now the definition of under served, just means people with not enough doctors per capita. In the case of Indiana, this includes large portions of the inner-circle of Indianapolis. So you could work with a 30-45 minute commute inside the circle (465) and go home to lovely Carmel Indiana. You'd have access to a diverse cultural center and no loans.

While it doesn't help your wife, this information can help readers that either want to go into medicine themselves, or have family members seeking such employment.

The problem is not medical school spots, it's residency spots. Having medical school graduates is useless if they can't get licensed or board certified.

How is that a problem? About 130 medical schools graduate on average 100 MDs every year, that is 13,000. Available residency spots are near 29,000. so, the rest of the spots are filled by FMGs, foreign medical graduates.

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