Based on articles I've read, and there's a ton of new med schools opening. This is exactly what happened with RN and NP programs. Expand existing programs, make them online and fast track, and create new programs so that there are now 2000 nurses applying for each hospital job.
Shortage of residency slots may have chilling effect on next generation of physicians
So much irony in that article. The most ridiculous of which is that it's written by the Koeppen, a dean of a medical school whose first class was in 2013, yet he's bemoaning the looming disaster created by new medcial schools...
Since you're so afraid of this, let's look at reality though:
In 2017, there were 28,849 PGY-1 positions available through the NRMP match. There were also 2,564 positions in the AOA match. So 31,413 positions total, between AOA and NRMP. That doesn't include the ~300 positions offered in the Uro match, or PGY-2 positions available.
In 2017, 19,254 USMDs graduated per AAMC statistics. That means that if everyone matched, there'd still be 9,595 positions available for non-USMDs. Additionally, there were only 5,938 DO graduates in 2017 (5,898 matched). So even if every one of them decided to forgo the AOA match and apply ACGME, there would still be 3,657 unfilled positions in the ACGME. IF you look at total numbers, there were 25,192 US grads for 31,413 positions, meaning there's a surplus of 6,221 openings that wouldn't be filled by US grads. So there's plenty of room to create more US medical schools in that sense.
Given that almost every residency program out there prefers USMDs over anyone else, and many prefer DOs over FMGs and IMGs, the only reason US grades don't match is if they're truly terrible candidates with multiple red flags (in which case they likely shouldn't be be treating patients), or they're applying to fields or programs they aren't competitive in. That number will be even greater in the future once the ACGME match absorbs all the AOA positions as well as the continued expansion of GME positions. Additionally, There is a large aging physician population. Over 50% of physicians are over 50 and over 30% are over 60 years old and we're already in a "shortage" (some fields legitimately are, some it's just maldistribution), so it's not like jobs will not be opening up for physicians in the future.
As to your point about this heading the same way as nursing. It won't. There is no medical school that will allow classes to be taught online, despite how badly some people here may argue that their first two years were useless. Additionally, there is no fast-track for clinical experience, and several schools are moving to shorten pre-clinical years and get students into the clinic earlier. Maybe if this expansion keeps happening exponentially without any kind of regulation or control, but given that the gov won't just freely throw funding into further GME, this is not something that will have any sort of impact for several more decades.
For the TL;DR version, this is not nearly the disaster that you or the articles you're reading make it out to be, and if the didn't have the US gov providing fed loans to US students attending Carib diploma mills, it wouldn't be an issue at all.
