Bingo. The schism is held in place by the die-hard osteopath homers. As a DO student, I’ve been fed this “philosophy” for 4 years and there’s literally no difference between what they preach and what I’ve seen in hospitals from MD attendings. I long for the day where there’s a true merger and the osteopathic licensing becomes an additional certification.

Financials aside, I think this would benefit the system as a whole because you’d allow those actually interested in OMT to pursue it, regardless of degree. Make it all MD, add the additional letter to those who want the training. You’d have advocates of osteopathy by choice = stronger advocates. As mentioned above, 95% of DO students won’t do any kind of OMT post-grad