Bill passed requiring 80% of University of Iowa students to be Iowa residents

The Iowa Senate is now weighing a bill passed by House lawmakers that would require at least 80 percent of students in the University of Iowa's medical and dental schools to be residents from the state of Iowa.

Right now, 70 percent of the school population is from the state of Iowa.

This bill would also require schools to give priority for federal residency positions to students from Iowa or students who have degrees from in-state schools.

The goal of the bill is to try and keep medical professionals trained in these school in Iowa, but Iowa City's State Representative Adam Zabner tells Iowa's News Now this isn't the way to do it.

"Look, Iowa is facing a physician's shortage, particularly in certain specialties, which is really problematic," Zabner said.

State representative Zabner is right about that shortage. A report from the Health Resources and Services Administrations shows that more than half of Iowa's 99 counties don't have enough medical professionals in primary care or dental health.

Another part of this bill wants to guarantee an interview for residency in the fields of obstetrics and gynecology, psychiatry, general surgery, and emergency medicine to applicants who have these fields as their specialty. These are some of the fields that need more staff, but Zabner says that's a slippery slope

"I do think it's really important to make sure that students from Iowa can get medical training. Currently 70 percent of students in med school in Iowa have a tie to the state or from the state," Zabner said. "But, I think when you get into legislating who they have to accept, you know, that has a serious risk of harming the prestige and the success of the university and I think that every Iowan benefits from having a world-class research hospital in our state"

There are also worries about whether or not students even want to stay here to practice medicine.

"The real problem here is that republicans have made it a hard state to be a doctor in," Zabner said.

He also points to the funding cuts and lack of open spots for medical professionals as reasons for students wanting to leave the state.

"They've underfunded health care and they've underfunded education. You know, I think if you want more students from Iowa to go to med school at the University of Iowa, fund a bunch of new slots. Instead we've seen, you know, chronic underfunding of our research universities in the state of Iowa," Zabner said.

Iowa also has multiple issues with the current health care system and Zabner says this isn't the way to to go about fixing those issues.

"I think it's really disingenuous to pretend that this is some silver bullet to solving health care in the state at the same time that federal and state level republicans are advancing legislation that would kick hundreds of thousands of Iowans off their health insurance."

Zabner also says he hasn't seen House republicans do anything to try and stop any of the federal cuts to research and funding.

Iowa's News Now has tried to talk to state Representative Ann Meyer, the chair of the committee on health and human services who is behind this proposal, but she hasn't gotten back to us.