I have not seen enough explanatory content on this thread, so here is a little bit of a crash-course between the politics of residency funding and the MD/DO issue.
With respects to Congress paying for more residency positions, I don't think they will, anytime soon, pay for more spots because it is well known problem that hospitals can simply use residency money to pay for other expenditures (and call this an "indirect" cost of residency), which inflates the cost of training a resident unnecessarily. Thus, the Congress-funding-residency positions is not cut and dry, and the argument from Congress is "where is the money going," and "who is the money coming from at the end of the day", and "what is the bottom line for the consumer". I believe Congress hasn't increased funding for years, so new residencies must be funded through other means.
(sources:
http://www.healthaffairs.org/healthpolicybriefs/brief.phpbrief_id=73,
http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/MedicalEducation/42786)
This leaves the onus on new medical schools to show they can establish strategic relationships with hospitals to increase residency positions without Congress paying for new positions (e.g. voluntary creation of programs at cost to the hospital, private funding, state funding). If a new school is opened in a location that has minimal competition with established schools (underserved areas, in need of primary care), and this new school can build strategic agreements with local hospitals in exchange to ease future increased doctor shortages, I don't think there must necessarily be a squeeze on existing residency positions. This may indeed be a new means for medical schools to expand, especially if their respective accreditation bodies require a plan for graduates, and said medical school can show a strategic hospital agreement. (source:
https://www.aamc.org/newsroom/newsreleases/374000/03212014.html).
Next, ACGME and AOA will merge in 2015. I do not see how there can be any further stigma between MD/DO after this merger, since all residencies will be under the same system, and if there is one residency pathway, why have two examinations? If the USMLE and COMLEX are merged, why have two separate medical identities? Etc. Likely, the MD/DO difference will become as trivial as the DMD, DDS difference (
http://www.1800dentist.com/dmd/). At the end of the day, science is science for those procedures backed by solid research, and DOs can practice OMM at theirs and their patient's discretion, who normally pay out of pocket for it (research exists, but is not extensive for OMM; sometimes it makes sense for identification and correction of gait pathologies/acquired scoliosis/lower back pain/other musculoskeletal conditions, sometimes it is piggybacked by alternative medicine and doesn't make sense). I believe the pre-merger problem was that DO students could take on an ACGME residency, but MD students couldn't take on an AOA residency, thus increases in student DOs was not equally requited for the MD side.
This is becoming tl;dr, so I hope the situation is a little more clear now, for all those who have gone back and forth over hearsay and the minutiae of details that is inherent in this kind of conversation. Please correct anything that I may have omitted or overstated.
