I've proposed a solution elsewhere but I'll quote it here:
We already have a pretty good K-12 public education system. At least it's pretty good for its original purpose which is to make better workers. I say we overhaul the K-12 system so that by the time each person graduates they'll have the equivalent of 3-5 years of medical school. Then, in addition to college + traditional medschool (or just votech), give people the option of attending a publicly funded quasi-votech-medschool, the graduates of which will be licensed to practice medicine (and these people will have about 7-9 years of training at that point).
So, we would have simultaneously increased the number of doctors and nurses, decreased the need for them (since medical knowledge will be more or less ubiquitous), created some parity in knowledge between health care providers and consumers (the disparity is one of the big reasons a free market can't work). Most importantly, since medical knowledge/skill will be so pervasive we would see a lot more innovation and entrepreneurial activity in that space. Instead of people working on the next Facebook in their garage/dorm room we might have them working on new kinds of equipment, treatment, or even medicine (like that doctor that built a dialysis machine in his garage: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1180628/D-I-Y-dial...). Or perhaps more stuff like this: http://www.wakemate.com/
That's a little ambitious. 3 years of medical school before they graduate high school? How about we catch up to the rest of the world first. The US K-12 education system is actually not that good. http://www.ecs.org/html/offsite.asp?document=http://nces.ed....
We already have a pretty good K-12 public education system. At least it's pretty good for its original purpose which is to make better workers. I say we overhaul the K-12 system so that by the time each person graduates they'll have the equivalent of 3-5 years of medical school. Then, in addition to college + traditional medschool (or just votech), give people the option of attending a publicly funded quasi-votech-medschool, the graduates of which will be licensed to practice medicine (and these people will have about 7-9 years of training at that point).
So, we would have simultaneously increased the number of doctors and nurses, decreased the need for them (since medical knowledge will be more or less ubiquitous), created some parity in knowledge between health care providers and consumers (the disparity is one of the big reasons a free market can't work). Most importantly, since medical knowledge/skill will be so pervasive we would see a lot more innovation and entrepreneurial activity in that space. Instead of people working on the next Facebook in their garage/dorm room we might have them working on new kinds of equipment, treatment, or even medicine (like that doctor that built a dialysis machine in his garage: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1180628/D-I-Y-dial...). Or perhaps more stuff like this: http://www.wakemate.com/
Simply make everyone a doctor of sorts.