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runamok 17 hours ago

100%. A few relevant articles: https://www.openhealthpolicy.com/p/medical-residency-slots-c... and https://www.openhealthpolicy.com/p/best-of-open-health-congr...

A snippet:

> CMS residency funding was capped beginning in 1997 at 1996 levels, and has only been raised once since then in Section 126 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021. From 1987 to 1997 the number of residents grew by 20.6%, while from 1997 to 2007 the growth in residencies was only 8%. The 2021 law attempts to address several issues by slowly increasing residencies in specific underserved situations such as rural areas. This officially just began with 200 new residencies nationwide this year, climbing to 1,000 additional residencies per year in five years. It is only a drop in the bucket compared to the 140,000 resident doctors in the US in 2020, the majority of whom were federally funded. Using a rough estimate from Census population data for 2000 and 2020, there are at least 50 million, or 18%, more people in the nation today than when the law was passed, making the current change a rather small effort.

> This growth in population without a corresponding growth in the doctors we train each year leads to higher salaries for doctors and higher costs for patients. More people are demanding the time of a similar number of doctors, driving up the price of doctor’s time, even before accounting for the US’ aging population.