Currently, for every person accepted by medical school, there are approximately 2 people with almost identical grades/scores who are rejected. This suggests we could roughly triple the supply of doctors if we put effort into training more.
Consider also that if you tripled the number of doctors, supply/demand says doctors will make less money, making the prospect of suffering through 10-12 years of training (and N years of low-wage work) less attractive.
Again, medical care should be less lucrative for providers, and I agree that we should make it easier to become doctors. I just think that the long-term scalable solution for this problem has to involve more than just doctors. It only takes 4-6 years to become a nurse practitioner.
I had a friend that went to a prestigious European medical school for a 6-year program right out of high school. Is he any less qualified as a doctor than someone that spent twice as long to get to the same point?
Or compromise and make the students prove themselves for 2 years before being accepted into the med program. 8 years, they're done and "well rounded".
If there were a large increase in medical schools, wouldn't the competition drive the price down?
It would also help if people could receive a greater range of medical treatment from trained professionals who were not full-blown doctors.
First question to ask in the USA is:
"Why are there quotas on medical doctor training?"
If you create scarcity, what do you expect will happen?
ISTR back in the 1990s the Clinton administration crowing about how they were helping NY State reduce the number of medical school admittances.