[startupcomment]

Wouldn't radiological and physician services, in general, be less "rare" if medical schools started to train more physicians (admit more students)? I have read studies that suggest that in certain markets and certain practice specialties we are and will face shortages of physicians in part because medical schools are training too few physicians. When I ask academic physicians they seem to think admitting more students would erode the quality of students. In other words, scarcity is a public good in this case as it helps to ensure that the "most talented" will ultimately become practitioners. I don't know how this view squares with the large number of foreign-trained residents in some residency programs.

[nostromo]

The Planet Money podcast covered this topic once. In proper markets, increasing the supply of a good or service decreases its cost. However, in the US, the more doctors we train, the more we spend on healthcare.

A reason this is the case is because the average healthcare consumer is totally removed from the cost of healthcare and the doctor has a perverse incentive to make work for him or herself and other specialists.

[carbocation]

Right idea, but wrong bottleneck. Admitting more students to medical school would enlarge the pool of applicants to Rads residency, but it would by no means force Rads programs to admit more applicants.