Ever notice how many foreign physicians we have in the United States? Ever wonder why you spend less and less time with your doctor and more time with nurses, physician's assistants, and nurse practitioners? Ever wonder why we don't have more American citizens who are qualified to serve, and to earn high wages as our nation's physicians? That's because there is an agency called the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) which serves as the accrediting agency under the U.S. Department of Education. FULL STORY
The American Medical Association is the most influential non-governmental agency within the LCME and it appoints members to sit on the LCME board. Many have dubbed the AMA the most powerful "union" for medical doctors in the country. Starting to get the picture? What actions do unions normally take to ensure higher wages? They intentionally restrict the supply of their skilled labor pool.
Since the mid-1980s, the nation's population has grown by 50 million. So how many additional medical schools has the LCME accredited to accommodate this explosive population growth? Over the past 30 years, the LCME has accredited a net gain of four institutions.
Each year we have thousands of young, bright, and qualified American students who want to get in to medical school, but cannot get in due to the shortage of accredited medical schools in our country. So we must resort instead to importing doctors from India, other parts of Asia, and Eastern Europe to meet market demand.
As the accreditation process is set up, higher education institutions are caught in a catch-22 because before they can become accredited, their medical program must be up and running for four years before they are eligible to apply for accreditation. How is a university expected to attract medical students to a program that is not even accredited?
America suffers from the same problem with our nursing shortage. The LCME is reluctant to expand accreditation for nursing schools as well. Each year we have thousands of qualified applicants are denied entry due to shortage of nursing school seats. Not only are qualified American citizens denied the high-wage earning potential of these positions, but the American consumer must pay through the nose for this shortage of qualified professional medical labor.
At President Obama's bipartisan health care summit, don't expect the Democrat or Republican Congressional leaders to bring up our nation's shortage of medical professionals as an issue item to reduce health care costs. The AMA has already silenced them.
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