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Considering medical school? Looks like the country can use your help. As reported by The Wall Street Journal, with the new health-care law, "the nation could face a shortage of as many as 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges."
Primary-care physicians will be in the greatest demand under the new law, but fewer med students are pursuing family medicine, with the number dropping more than a quarter between 2002 and 2007. The new law does offer "sweeteners to encourage more people to enter medical professions, and a 10% Medicare pay boost for primary-care doctors." Plus, some new medical schools have opened recently, and 12 more have raised their enrollment of first-years.
Nevertheless, it seems the big issue isn't med school enrollment, but a shortage of residency positions. Congress had imposed a cap on funding for these residencies in 1997, which is crucial if the number of positions were to increase. And, doctors from other countries also need to complete a residency in the U.S. in order to practice here, so that can also aggravate the issue.
The new law does have a provision for slot redistribution, in which any funding for unfilled residency slots will be redistributed to other institutions, with the majority going to general-surgery or primary-care residencies. Either way, major changes must be made so that the medical profession, and we as patients, don't suffer down the road. 
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