This article makes some bold claims about doctor "cartels", but it seems like the problem lies with Congress' failure to increase funding for residency slots:

This article makes some bold claims about doctor "cartels", but it seems like the problem lies with Congress' failure to increase funding for residency slots: > In recent years, the number of medical residents has become so restricted that even the American Medical Association is pushing to have the number of slots increased. The major obstacle at this point is funding. It costs a teaching hospital roughly $150,000 a year for a residency slot. Most of the money comes from Medicare, with a lesser amount from Medicaid and other government sources. The number of slots supported by Medicare has been frozen for two decades after Congress lowered it in 1997 at the request of the American Medical Association and other doctors’ organizations. Now, I'm sure there are all sorts of unknown details about the relationship between the AMA and congress, but the AMA at least publicly asks for more residency slots, so describing doctors as a cartel seems weird.