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There is a surplus of medical students and residency slots every year. AMA lobbies for increased supply of providers.
You can verify these for yourself if you'd like.
And why are there vacancies in residencies?
Because the AAMC is exempted from federal antitrust laws due a rider in a time-sensitive bill that no one actually discussed in committee.:
It's so not a cartel that critical components must be exempted from laws targeting cartels.
Great! Abolish the match. All the trainees are down. I'm down. I'm not sure it's a good idea but I'm down.
That's also not the problem (the problem is that programs with unmatched slots would rather have nobody than the available candidates in SOAP/candidates available in SOAP would rather take a year off than go to those programs). Also all kinds of slots exist in a gray area outside the match.
But by all means abolish the match. Institutional memory for why it exists is low enough that people are willing to give it a shot.
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