The U.S. has a physician shortage, created in part by a century-old reform that shut down bad medical schools. But why haven’t we filled the gap? Why are some physicians so unhappy? And which is worse: a bad doctor or no doctor at all?
SOURCES:Karen Clay, professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University.Rochelle Walensky, physician-scientist and former director of the CDC.
RESOURCES:"Medical School Closures, Market Adjustment, and Mortality in the Flexner Report Era," by Karen Clay, Grant Miller, Margarita Portnykh, and Ethan Schmick (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2025)."Application Overload — A Call to Reduce the Burden of Applying to Medical School," by Rochelle Walensky and Loren Walensky (New England Journal of Medicine, 2025)."Challenges to the Future of a Robust Physician Workforce in the United States," by Rochelle Walensky and Nicole McCann (New England Journal of Medicine, 2025)."The first step to addressing the physician shortage," by Rochelle Walensky and Nicole McCann (STAT, 2025)."Physician Workforce: Projections, 2022-2037," (National Center for Health Workforce Analysis, 2024).“Projected Estimates of African American Medical Graduates of Closed Historically Black Medical Schools,” by Kendall Campbell, Irma Corral, Jhojana Infante Linares, and Dmitry Tumin (JAMA Network, 2020)."Medical Education in the United States and Canada," by Abraham Flexner (The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1910).
EXTRAS:"Is the Air Traffic Control System Broken?" series by Freakonomics Radio (2025)."Are You Ready for the Elder Swell?" by Freakonomics Radio (2025)."Are Private Equity Firms Plundering the U.S. Economy?" by Freakonomics Radio (2023).
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Freakonomics Radio
The U.S. has a physician shortage, created in part by a century-old reform that shut down bad medical schools. But why haven’t we filled the gap? Why are some physicians so unhappy? And which is worse...
For the 20th anniversary of Freakonomics, Debbie Millman of Design Matters interviews Stephen Dubner about his upbringing, his writing career, and why it's important to “swing your swing.” Plus: a sne...
Arthur Brooks, an economist and former head of the American Enterprise Institute, believes that there is only one remedy for our political polarization: love. In this 2021 episode, we ask if Brooks is...
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In this episode from 2013, we look at whether spite pays — and if it even exists. SOURCES:Benedikt Herrmann, research officer at the European Commission.Steve Levitt, co-author of Freakonomics and hos...
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A famous essay argues that “not a single person on the face of this earth” knows how to make a pencil. How true is that? In this 2016 episode, we looked at what pencil-making can teach us about globa...
Nicholas Cullinan, the new director of the British Museum, seems to think so. “I'm not afraid of the past,” he says — which means talking about looted objects, the basement storerooms, and the leaking...
Austan Goolsbee, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, is less reserved than the average banker. He explains why vibes are overrated, why the Fed’s independence is non-negotiable, and why...