NEW YORK (AP) – The academic hospitals that train all U.S. doctors are warning that their teaching programs could be traumatized by plans to slash government spending on medical education.

The White House said this month that it intends to end the practice of funding doctor training through Medicaid, the government health care program for the poor.

“We want to make sure that the funding that goes into that program goes for clinical services, and not for medical education,” said Herb Kuhn, acting deputy administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

The administration has yet to clarify the details of the cut, first mentioned in the federal budget proposal that President Bush sent to Congress on Monday.

But the stakes could be huge for hospitals, which rely heavily on young medical residents to care for patients.

An analysis performed last fall for the Association of American Medical Colleges found that Medicaid payments for graduate medical education totaled $3.2 billion in 2005, making it the second-largest source of money for such programs.

Abolition of that funding would be particularly hard on New York, where hospitals employ 15,000 medical residents a year, or about 1 in 7 of all U.S. doctors in training. New York’s hospitals also rake in the most Medicaid dollars linked to medical education: around $1 billion annually.

“This would cripple the ability of hospitals to deliver services, as well as have a horrible impact on future generations of physicians,” said Kenneth E. Raske, president of the Greater New York Hospital Association.

Dr. Steven A. Wartman, president and chief executive of the Association of Academic Health Centers, said the change could cause some hospitals to trim support for residency programs, which all new U.S. doctors must complete to be licensed.

It isn’t clear, however, how heavy the cuts will actually be.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services estimated that rule change would save $1.7 billion in federal dollars over the next five years.

That dollar amount differed wildly from the reductions predicted by hospital groups, which based their estimates on a White House budget document that indicated an eventual eradication of all Medicaid funding for graduate medical education, and not the lesser cuts outlined by CMMS.

Kuhn said he could not explain the vast difference between the estimates. He added that the specifics of the administration’s proposal, which could be implemented without Congressional approval, have yet to be developed.

Separately, the administration has proposed $4 billion in cuts over five years in spending on graduate medical education through Medicare, the health care program for the elderly. Those cuts would require legislative approval.

The primary type of hospital training at issue is the residency, a stage of education in which doctors who have graduated from medical school gain on-the-job expertise in a specialty. Residents typically work 80 hours a week, at a fraction of the pay earned by their more experienced colleagues.

The direct impact of the cuts is likely to vary from state to state.

Each state sets many of its own rules for the Medicaid program, and not all allow hospitals to get extra payments for having an academic program.

In some states, those payment total only a few million dollars a year. In others, the amount is far greater. California hospitals received $187 million in such funds in 2005, while Michigan received $173 million, according to a survey by the Association of American Medical Colleges.

A substantial loss of that revenue might cause some hospitals to trim the number of residents they have on staff, said Dr. Russell Robertson, president of the Council on Graduate Medical Education, a body created by Congress.

He noted that such reductions could have unintended side effects, including a reduction in research performed at hospitals, and longer waiting times for patients seeking care.

“If those funds were to be diminished, or evaporate, one can only wonder what the effect would be on resident-provided services,” Robertson said.