Which I think itself is a bit of a red herring. Medicare subsidized residency slots are not the only way training doctors could be funded, and largely an artifact of our billing procedures and criteria.
It is just one aspect of how incredibly constrained the supply of healthcare is in the US. Medications that are over the counter in many countries requires someone with 12 years of training.
Sure, and my point is that the entire bottleneck is based on a a completely arbitrary artifact of how we handle billing in the US. It is a policy choice.
Residents provide healthcare to patients with real value. This healthcare either gets attributed to the attending physician or goes unbilled. The market value of care provided exceeds what it actually costs to employ and train a resident.
Yes, largely the fact that Medicare forbids billing for resident services. Im sure there is also an objection on the insurance reimbursement side as well, but I see no reason why a successful procedure of adequate quality performed by a resident should not be billable at the same rate.
It is just one aspect of how incredibly constrained the supply of healthcare is in the US. Medications that are over the counter in many countries requires someone with 12 years of training.