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To the Editor: Ms Miller and Mr Greaney¹ provided an overview of the legal challenges facing the resident match. However, they did not discuss 2 of the most important economic issues raised by the lawsuit—does the match reduce resident salaries and does it improve the match between residents' skills and preferences and programs' resources and needs?

The match does not remove residency programs' need to offer competitive salaries simply because students' preferences are taken into account in the matching algorithm. A program that offers very low salaries runs the risk of unfilled positions. In 2002, one in 10 residency positions was not filled.² If a program believes that the students it desires are influenced by money, it can choose to offer higher salaries. The match does ban individual negotiations between students and hospitals. Removing this ban might lead to bidding wars for "superstars." However, there is a significant risk that . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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The National Resident Matching Program and Antitrust Law
Frances H. Miller and Thomas L. Greaney
JAMA. 2003;289(7):913-918.
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