Doctors and medical professionals are somehow immune from allegations of gatekeeping when in fact that is what they do all the time under the guise of different noble reasons

Happened in France too. It was put in place in the late 70s, and ended in 2020. Called the «numerus clausus» (closed number, in latin) and it restricted the number of medicine students allowed in the country every year.

The number of students fell by 50% between 1980 and the mid 90s: 8500 new students/year in 1972, 3500 in 1993.

Of course, now the number of doctors in France is far from enough for an aging population, in every specialty and it will take at least a decade to improve. It's not uncommon to have 1-year waitlists for ophthalmology appointments, and several weeks or even months for dermatology.

Not sure if it is valid for France. But there is paid healthcare system in Germany. No wait time and newest treatment methods are used if you bring your own cash. Same doctor has appointment next day if you tell that you‘re paying by yourself. If you come as normally public insured patient… well… come in a month or better in a year please.

> doctors themselves want less competition

Which is entirely rational. A medical degree is expensive and doctors want a return on their investment. In that sense, doctors are very similar to real estate investors (and to a certain extent labor unions); they all want a return on investment (don't we all!) at the detriment of society. Because damn, competition kinda sucks compared to coasting along, especially as you get older.

There are countries where university education is free and there are exactly the same problems.

Doesn't really matter. Doctors spend a huge amount of time in education. There's a massive opportunity cost, and they want to be paid.

"If I'm going to study into my 30s I want a huge bag."

Understandable, though not necessarily defensible.

So it doesn't really matter because other occupations also have the same opportunity cost and want to be paid and are not getting top of the field salaries straight out of university but have to take shitty internships and maybe get decent pay past 30yo.

If people in those fields could use laws to limit competition, they would do so as well.

> The most interesting part of that is that population typically sides with the doctors, not the government, for some reason.

I wish.

In my country, the government blames everything on doctors despite displaying truly sovietic levels of corruption and inefficiency. Doctors working for the government in poor areas might not even be provided with a functioning sink to wash their hands with, yet society still expects them to provide the highest standard of care.

Entire media campaigns have been launched against the "mercenary" doctors who put profit over the well being of the poor patients. Now doctors manning ERs routinely suffer physical violence. 15 minute waits are enough to provoke literal vandalism in the ERs. I know of one case where murder charges were pressed against a couple of stable flu patients who after sitting around for less than 15 minutes decided they had waited enough due to the laziness of the doctors, invaded restricted areas of the hospital, vandalized them and disrupted a team managing a myocardial infarction, obviously leading to the patient's death.

My understanding is that in many countries the biggest blocker to increasing number of doctors is the fact that there aren't enough doctors to teach. Unlike CS where we can simply increase the number of seats in. A course with medical school there are real bottlenecks on things like cadavers and mentors.

There aren't enough spots in medical schools. I was a 4.1/4.3 GPA in Canada and I didn't get in med school. My sister got in with a 4.24/4.3 GPA (one single A, all A+).

Doctors in control regularly shut down any attempts at increasing this limit.

While true, it's also true that scaling medical school is not like a CS situation. My school quadrupled the number of CS seats to meet demands over 4 years. I can't see this happening with medical schools. My brother who is currently in a medical school regularly says how hard it is for the faculty to find teachers simply because there aren't enough. To add to it there are bottlenecks like not having enough cadavers.

Medical education is very hands on unlike engineering where we just throw people in the deep end at work. This is with good reason.

I'm absolutely for having more doctors and medical school seats but I think it's important to acknowledge that it maynot be as simple as increasing seats. There needs to be more fundamental reforms. That being said yes there are completely pricks of doctors who enter politics.

And intelligence combined with ability to deal with people and enough grit, memory and sleep deprivation resistance to pass medical school.

Maybe medical school itself needs to change to make the role easier and split the functions into easier ones that more people can do.

Yes!

After I finished grad school (electrophysiology and imaging in large animal models, so seemingly relevant experience), I thought about becoming a clinician. However, I wasn't even eligible to apply to med school because it had been 5 years since I took an introductory biology or physics class (with lab!). It seems I was qualified enough to teach in a medical school but not to be a student.

A faster scientist -> practitioner pathway would be such an obvious win-win: it'd help with the overcrowded academic job market AND relieve clinical shortages, but most of the emphasis seems to be on getting MDs into research instead.

Right. Medical school in other countries is certainly not a walk in the park. But nor is it the hellacious endeavor it can be in the US, especially then as an early resident.

But reducing the number of admissions is not going to fix it, it will only exacerbate it.

If we increase number of admissions, then long-term doctors should become less overworked. That's a path to fix it.