Popping the medical education bubble before it forms: It's about dollars and sense

Headlines have previously acknowledged the risk of a "bubble and crash" phenomenon in the physician workforce pipeline. A growing number of medical career dissatisfiers, including emotional and physical burnout, loss of autonomy and burdensome regulations, compound the longstanding fundamental issue of the prohibitive direct and opportunity costs associated with medical training. For U.S. medical education and, in turn, healthcare to remain robust and high-quality, creative solutions are needed to address the untenable physician debt-to-income ratios and to ensure not only that the quantity and quality of medical school aspirants remains favorable to the profession, but that the profession remains responsible to its future members. Creating fiscally healthy physicians is a societal imperative.