The supply of American doctors

American medicine is a market with tightly restricted entry, at all levels. Proposed legislation offers a glimpse: Bill Would Create More Medical-Residency Slots, Potentially Easing Physician Shortage

"Legislation introduced in Congress on Monday would expand the number of Medicare-sponsored training slots for new doctors by 15,000, a step that two medical-education groups said would go a long way toward easing a projected shortage of physicians.

"The bill, the Physician Shortage Reduction and Graduate Medical Education Accountability and Transparency Act (HR 6352), is sponsored by Rep. Aaron Schock, an Illinois Republican, and Rep. Allyson Schwartz, a Pennsylvania Democrat.

"Medical schools have been expanding their enrollments and new schools have been opening up as concerns have grown about a shortage that could reach more than 90,000 physicians by 2020, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

"Those worries have intensified with passage of the Affordable Care Act, which will greatly increase the number of people seeking medical care by providing insurance coverage to 32 million more people.

"But while more students are making their way through the medical-school pipeline, they're likely to run into bottlenecks because of a cap on the number of Medicare-supported residency training slots that Congress imposed in 1997."