Bill Description: Senate Bill 1335 would expand a government program that provides funding for medical students in exchange for their working in Idaho for four years after graduation to include veterinary students.
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Does it create, expand, or enlarge any agency, board, program, function, or activity of government? Conversely, does it eliminate or curtail the size or scope of government?
Section 33-3731, Idaho Code, deals with contract requirements for state-supported medical students and the medical education reimbursement fund. This includes Idaho students in certain out-of-state schools, such as those in the Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, Idaho (WWAMI) regional medical education program.
This section requires that an Idaho resident “who is accepted into a medical education program enrolling Idaho students supported by Idaho state funds in slots reserved for Idaho students shall, before confirming enrollment in such program or school, enter into a contract with the state board of education or the board’s designee” agreeing to enter “active full-time professional practice in Idaho” for at least four years within one year of “obtaining a license to practice medicine; finishing a residency or subspecialty residency; or finishing a medical education fellowship as defined by the state board of education or the board’s designee.”
Senate Bill 1335 would amend this section in multiple places to make the system apply to veterinary students as well, and add that at least 600 hours per year for each of the four years be “devoted to providing veterinary services to agricultural animals.” Additionally, veterinary education students’ residency training “shall require that a majority of time be devoted to mixed practice agricultural animal veterinary medicine.”
Programs such as the one in this section of code allow government to leverage redistributive subsidies to incentivize students to make economic and employment decisions that are preferred by central planners.
Using financial incentives to push students into certain careers and specialties or dictate where they work is government manipulation of the market. It distorts prices and leads to outcomes that are not driven by natural economic factors.
Expanding the program to veterinary students will only compound these problems.
Students who choose to study veterinary medicine should do so because it suits their interests and talents and because there is real and sufficient market demand for the specialties they select, not because of the availability of enhanced state funding as a type of bribe to keep them working in Idaho.
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