With law, for example, you have to go to law school and pass a test, but if you do, you are in. There's a lot of law schools out there, to the point where a large percentage of people graduating don't get good jobs. The same isn't true for medical residency graduates.
>It's that there are literally X number of slots
This is fundamentally incompatible with the idea of a privatized healthcare system. It simply cannot be functional this way. I hope Americans will wake up and realize that this sort of welfare should not exist.
It's always sad when I see Americans brag about their highly efficient free market systems when they fail the basic requirements needed for a free market to actually work.
Yes it can work and yes you'd be allowed to brag but as it is you haven't figured out how to make it work yet.
https://www.ucop.edu/federal-governmental-relations/_files/f...
You need to do a residency to be properly trained to handle all kinds of situations. Your surgeon can't be in a position of "well I've never done this in a supervised setting so let me go find someone to teach me" as the lead surgeon. That's exactly the reason they do a residency.