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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It isn’t collapsing. It has collapsed.  [/quote]

100%

When someone goes to the ER with chest pains & is waiting in the waiting room for 9 hrs instead of immediately being taken to triage, it's a broken system.

When an elderly person is diagnosed with having had a stroke in the ER & discharged with orders to follow up with a neurologist within 7 days, but the earliest appointment you can get them is 8 months out, the system is broken. My sibling and I sat calling with our mom to try to get my dad an appointment & this was the result. We have him on a dozen different waitlists but we're still 4 months away from his appt. Terrifying.

A friend went through something similar in finding a Derm. Her Derm couldn't get her in until FEBRUARY 2025 and she had a worrisome spot appear that was rapidly changing. After finding none that could get her in, she went the concierge Derm route. Luckily she had the funds to do so, but what about those who can't go that route? We're going to get to the point where those without the funds to seek alternate treatments get sicker or die while waiting. [/quote]

The medical schools and accreditation boards keep doctors in low supply to keep wages up.[/quote]
And to keep the profession prestigious. [/quote]

I don't fully understand the med school to residency to post-residency path, but I do know that in the 80s there was concern about too many doctors, and in the 1990s the number of admissions to med school was deliberately reduced. Residency is (I think) mostly funded by Medicare part A, with a small percentage funded by states.

Mid-posting, I found this: https://www.medicaleconomics.com/view/match-day-2023-a-reminder-of-the-real-cause-of-the-physician-shortage-not-enough-residency-positions

[quote]Instead of relying on training shortcuts, the physician shortage can be immediately alleviated by unfreezing residency funding. But Congress has failed to act, despite the introduction of multiple bills addressing the issue over the last 17 years. Legislation proposed by U.S. Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) in 2007 and again in 2009 did not pass committee hearings, with critics arguing that the bill targeted non-primary care training. Similar bills have been reintroduced nearly every year since 2011, with the most recent legislation sponsored by Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) in 2021.

The current version of the bill, the Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act of 2021, which would fund 14,000 residency positions over seven years, is the [b]tenth attempt to lift the 1997 freeze on residency positions[/b]. Despite the bipartisan support of over two hundred House members and a third of Senators, Congress has not yet acted. While Congress did allocate funding for 1,000 residency positions (200 per year) as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, critics note that the slots are tied up in Medicare red tape.[/quote]

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