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Comment by refurb | Hacker News Reader

Canada is having a huge shortage of primary care doctors. So much many people don’t have one and have to rely on urgent care.[1]

This isn’t a US only issue.

[1] https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/despite-more-doctors-many-cana...

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The US purposefully lowered the amount of doctors in the 90s. If anything we should be creating more need schools and creating more doctors.

That's a big claim to make without providing any evidence or even some context.

I'm not the OP; when I read OP's comment, I thought "Oh, I think the AMA's been doing this since long before the 90's".

Here's the article I read a few years back that made me think this is the case:

I know it's mises.org, so hold the pichforks until the end. Even if they're way off base, there's got to be some value to be gleaned:

https://mises.org/library/100-years-medical-robbery

The AMA corrected course on this. The problem is not a lack of schools. The problem is a lack of hospitals to train them in as part of the residency. As long as residency is a thing, we have an insurmountable bottle neck.

Evidence to the limitations. https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/4561/does-the-a...

AFAIK due to regulation, hospitals can prevent other, new hospitals from being built and it happens often. Get rid of the regulation.

In many places, the government prevents new hospitals from being built. The existing hospital doesn't have to do anything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_of_need

Both are problems. Half the qualified med school candidates don't get accepted to any schools. Of course if we build more med schools we'd need more residencies too, but the government can just raise the subsidy they give residencies to create more.

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