There are countries with 7 year programs. 5 or 6 is more common. But some of those require an extra internship year before residency (which may be optional).

But you’re forgetting the part where the US doesn’t have a national high school curriculum. So a direct high school to medschool pipeline in the US would definitely include a year or 2 of general education.

The whole point would be to skip the "general education" part and teach directly useful parts. You can even have an entry test for what you expect students to know, that will create a common baseline.

We don't have a national curriculumn. If you start requiring college level general education from high school students, you're biasing selection against kids whose schools can't or won't provide those classes. There's no way to force local schools to change without a major overhaul of our entire system.

We don't do that in the United States for any other undergraduate professional degrees. Engineers, accountants, pharmacists, nurses, teachers etc... all require college level general education.

Eliminating that is not realistic.

It is already heavily biased and there are no high schools that don't provide basic chemistry or biology.

It is really not that it would be impossible, it is just that you don't want to change the status quo.

In the vast majority of high schools biology and chemistry aren’t remotely comparable to the college lab based classes.

High school English isn’t generally equivalent to college English. High school history isn’t equivalent etc…

General education for doctors also includes calc based physics, so you need calculus as well.

Do you think people want to go to a doctor that has a less broad education than their accountant so they can save 3% on their medical bills?

Why don’t we do an experiment? A new medical classification—MDWL (medical doctor without letters). MDWLs go directly out of high school to a 6 year med school where all the fluff has been cut out. No history, no general chemistry, biology, physics, calculus, English, art history, political science, literature, sociology, psychology, foreign language, business etc…

Then let people choose whether they want to save $10 on an office visit to go the MDWL.

Physicians salaries btw represent about 8% of medical costs. So even if we did manage to cut medical education from 8 to 6 years we’re talking maybe saving 2%. That 2% would be eaten up by rising administrative costs, and most of those the cost savings would likely be taken by private equity. Not passed on to the consumer.

why do you think general education is necessary? went to med school directly from high school in england, and loved the fact I didn't have to waste time and money on “general education” - I can read and I know what a library is, I don't need a university to spoon feed me “general education”

You could say the exact same about high school in general. Where you end general education is a tradeoff. You could say 12 year olds can read, so why not let them go be apprentice electricians or whatever.

However, what I or you think is irrelevant. America in general has decided that general education is a requirement for anyone who is college educated.

Every undergraduate professional degree requires general education. Pharmacists, accountants, engineers, teachers, actuaries etc...

The other ones are finished with their learning years faster and can move on into jobs.

With doctors, unnecessary additional years hurt them more then others and also it makes whole medical system more expensive. So yes, there is a difference. The situation is worst with doctors.

2 additional years of general education is 2 extra years whether total training time is 4 years or 10 years. There’s no non-linear effect that I’m aware of that makes a 33% increase from 6 to 8 years somehow much more expensive or more painful than a 100% increase from 2 to 4.

All of the other profession degrees provide public services and so pass the costs of general education directly to the public. In many cases like with pharmacists and physical therapists, it’s directly affecting the medical system.

Also take a look at the percentage of medical costs that go to doctors. It’s a small percentage. Speeding their training up by 2 years isn’t going to make much of a dent.

In fact if you move to 6 year med school it might actuality make their education more expensive overall because med school is much more expensive per year than an undergraduate degree.