How Gen Z’s love of status is fueling a massive doctor shortage
https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-z-doctor-shortage-med-students-primary-care-family-medicine-2025-3?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=insider-futurology-sub-post
How Gen Z’s love of status is fueling a massive doctor shortage
https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-z-doctor-shortage-med-students-primary-care-family-medicine-2025-3?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=insider-futurology-sub-post
13 Comments
**TLDR:**
* **The Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts that we will need far more people working in healthcare over the next decade. And the National Center for Health Workforce Analysis predicts a shortage of about 87,000 family doctors by 2037.**
* **A lot of Gen Zers want to be doctors, which is really good news. But each year, hundreds of medical residencies for primary care programs struggle to find students, and many who enter the field end up abandoning it.**
* **That’s leaving Americans without enough doctors to go around. Researchers** [**estimate**](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9881650/) **that the number of people over 50 with at least one chronic illness will double from 71.5 million in 2020 to 142.6 million by 2050, which would add pressure to an already stressed healthcare workforce.**
why did you make up this editorialized title that doesn’t appear in the actual story?
Love of status has nothing to do with this, it’s not a generation specific issue either. It’s a tough industry and people are finding other jobs that don’t have such a high financial bar right at the beginning. god forbid people don’t want to be saddled with decades of crippling debt working in an industry that crushes you from the get go until you can ditch the hospitals and go private.
The problem of finding new nurses and doctors exists worldwide and it has more to do with educational costs and brutal training concepts than it does with a generation wanting rapid validation.
I assume doctor training/schooling costs well over 100,000
Anything at all about the costs of medical school student debt? About how residency programs burn out doctors with their 100+ hour weeks? No time for making a family or having a life outside of work
I know a few people who are still trying to pay off their med school debt in their 40s. They would now have the time for a family, but have to work to try and pay off those loans.
Always follow the Jews. They used to go in to medicine. Now they don’t.
The entire system of how we make doctors is abysmal and archaic. The knowledge standards should remain, but the process and cost is stupid.
Same with Nursing. We burn students out before they even start working.
Is there any med school with lots of vacancies and not enough applicants? Seems like they’re harder to get into than ever from the people I know interested or in that path.
Seems like a bottleneck if anything.
The problem is that the number of accepted students at Medical Universities is not increasing despite increasing population size and age. This is because the medical establishment doesn’t want to increase competition for doctors.
Enters AI. As I recall the earlier generations of ChatGPT had made doctors really nervous because ChatGPT diagnosed patients faster and more accurate than doctors. That may expedite and streamline doctors’ visits?
ah yes its gen z’s love of status that is the issue rather than the massive tuition costs and debt requirements or the years of residency before you really make a good wage. i think this is more to blame on it not really being worth it compared to the effort and monetary outcomes other jobs have to offer.
Doctor shortage is just due to the fact that it’s really expensive to go to medical school and it takes a really long time to complete. We live in an era where people have to sacrifice all of their time to maintain a base level lifestyle for themselves.
The undeniable flaw at the heart of right-wing conservative thinking is that **some things will just cost money.** The entire point of a country with a functioning government that taxes its citizens is **for that money to go toward things that cost money but pay for themselves in non-monetary ways.**
Yet the answer is always to cut money going towards things we need in the name of Personal Freedom, and float some half-assed explanation of where the labour will come from instead. Because the *actual* cost-saving measure in right-wing economic theory is **a sub-class of workers that have no choice but to handle crucial labour but cannot be allowed to earn a fair wage for their efforts.**
Lots of people want to be doctors. They cannot realistically afford to upfront costs. It probably shouldn’t cost a prohibitive amount of money to take a role that will benefit people for decades to come. It should probably be paid for *by* the government, with (maybe) a commitment or requirement that someone has to pay back some of the amount if they don’t finish med school or take a job abroad after graduation. This feels entirely reasonable.
But no. The only true crime in America is denying a private institution the right to make as much money as possible without limit. We’re seeing this exact same conversation happening in real-time when it comes to childcare. The Trump Administration’s current plan is to *reduce existing regulations around childcare workers*, specifically when it comes to things like age, experience, and the maximum ratio of adults-to-children in a childcare facility. They will commit zero funding. They will sponsor zero grants or bills to allow new businesses to form. When asked about their ideal approach to childcare, they have said the following things:
* “Childcare is a war on the working class, by denying them the right to look after their kids in whatever way they see fit.” (Vance, paraphrased.)
* “Traditional families have elders step up for childcare. Families should do that; ask their parents and grandparents to provide childcare.” (Vance, paraphrased again)
* “Robots will provide childcare, or work on factory lines. Or both.” (Musk, paraphrased)
The solution is always **unpaid labour and/or hypothetical robots/AI.** Because they will do anything other than spend taxpayer money on *things all taxpayers agree are worth spending money on.* They take and offer literally nothing, then complain that all the government does is take while doing nothing.
Seriously. Treat the process of becoming an MD or an RN like military service; the government will comp your bill if you do your time.
Lol, blame the kids for problems that have been decades in the making and are driven by institutional design. The limitation of residency slots, kept artifically low to keep salaries high, has driven a shortage since a 1996 law that caps residencies.