Over-regulation partly to blame for 'wildly expensive' research costs, says medical executive

He also said that transparency from research institutions could help create better awareness of how taxpayer dollars are being used to support those institutions that have become the bane of critics who say they are stockpiling taxpayer dollars for their own benefit. 

"It would also mean that the costs would go down because the additional personnel, the additional things that are necessary to keep track of things for these regulations, that would also go down," Skorton pointed out.

Skorton added that the AAMC was "very hungry" to work with the administration on improving this framework, noting that "we're not here to claim that the status quo is perfect, and we want to defend it, but the idea of very quickly knocking down the facilities and administrative costs to what felt like an arbitrary number to many of us, 15%, will cause research to be reduced."

The AAMC president said there is an onus on research institutions as well to better educate folks about where their taxpayer dollars are going when they are utilized by federally funded research programs.

One of the doctors who shared their thoughts, Dr. Erika Schwartz, echoed calls for reform to the current structure, similar to Skorton.