Comment by silexia
3 months ago
We desperately need to vastly increase the number of physicians in this country to decrease costs. The AMA is the most powerful trade union in history and has locked the number of new doctors a year for many years now. Restricting supply for a service with inelastic demand skyrockets prices and lines their pockets.
Bullshit. The AMA is a voluntary membership organization, not a trade union. They have no power to set prices or engage in collective bargaining.
The immediate bottleneck on producing more physicians is limited Medicare funding for residency slots. Every year some students graduate from medical school with an MD but are unable to practice medicine because they don't get matched to a residency program (some do get matched the following year). At one point the AMA did lobby Congress to restrict that funding but they reversed position several years back.
https://savegme.org/
Who lobbies for the regulations that limit funding for residency and have these ridiculous regulations to start with?
Which ridiculous regulations? Can you give us a specific CFR reference? I don't understand your question.
> At one point the AMA did lobby Congress to restrict that funding but they reversed position several years back.
Yes, this is one of the cartel/union-like behaviors people complain about with the AMA.
There are more examples: https://petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2022/03/15/ama-scope-of-p...
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