Posted on 11/19/2009 6:34:01 PM PST by Dajjal
Doctor Shortage
by Dick Morris
Joseph Stubbs, president of the American College of Physicians — the second-largest doctors’ group in the country — confirms that “the supply of doctors just won’t be there” for the 30 million new patients President Barack Obama wants to cover. Noting that the doctor shortage is “already a catastrophic crisis,” Stubbs noted that underserved areas in the U.S. currently need almost 17,000 new primary care physicians even before Obama’s proposals are enacted.
In the meantime, according to Bloomberg News, a 2009 survey by Merritt Hawkins & Associates, a recruiting and research firm in Irving, Texas, found that “the average waiting time to see a family-medicine doctor in Boston … is 63 days, the most among the 15 cities” surveyed. By comparison, in Miami, it was only seven days. The study noted that Boston’s longer wait was “driven in part by the healthcare reform initiative” passed in 2006 in Massachusetts, upon which the Obama program is modeled. Bloomberg reported that “as many as half of doctors in the state have closed their practices to new patients, forcing many of the newly insured to turn to emergency rooms for care.”
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
He said another problem is that US medical schools are creating too many women doctors. He said that the problem with women doctors is that they "hit the ROAD" -- specializing in radiology, ophthalmology, anesthesia and dermatology so that they can have peaceful home lives with no midnight emergency calls.
See also:
Obamacare ping
Harvard has proved that it’s a lot easier to get a law degree with only average IQ than it is to get a medical degree (requiring a much higher IQ).
Oh, forgot, the Kenyan Klod was special.
No problem. Lots of Pakistani and Indian doctors will come and work for much less. Get used to Dr. Iqbal and Dr. Raja.
Thanks, an obamacare list makes sense. But no, he doesn’t care, at least about care. Control of care, that’s another thing entirely.
Yes, there will be a doctor shortage because many of them who are over 50 y.o. will retire before they allow non-physicians to make decisions about what tests they can do and what care they can provide.
However, those 30 million supposedly new individuals who don’t have insurance are already getting health care. It’s not like there are 30 million new folks who will drop out of the sky. Go to any emergency room, go to any clinic, you’ll find them there. Ask any doc what percentage of his patients pay nothing.
I certainly take care of my health. I begin every day with a plateful of fried eggs and bacon, and end it with a midnight snack of chocolate cake.
That way I'm sure to be dead and buried before the commies takeover ... or the machines become intelligent.
Yea, but we have an over abundance of Lawyers. I guess this will balance out in some karmic way.
The supply can partially be rectified by allowing RNs and specialists perform many routine and moderate procedures.
After the "Public Option" forces insurance companies out of business and forces everyone into the Government Plan, billions (trillions?) of dollars will be pulled out of the Stock Market and other investments (which is where the private insurance companies place their reserves).
This will have a devastating effect on the economy.
But I don't hear any conservative economists mentioning it. (sigh)
Kudos to my brother for pointing this out to me.
Nope. Unless Dr. Iqbal and Dr. Raja are the cream of the cream, they won't get licensed here in the US.
There has been a ceiling on the number of residency training positions in the US for years now, so there aren't enough residency training slots available. Then there are the licensing exams.
This is absolutely true. Over half of med school admissions are now female. A classmate of my daughter's, while still in med school, was already setting her sights on a position that would not require weekends, nights or being on-call.
My OB-Gyn is a female, and 3 of the past 7 years I have had to see a strange doctor because she's been away on extended maternity leaves of up to 4 months. Our next door neighbor, a female family practice doc, just left a busy office to join the staff of a university student health clinic where the hours are M-F 9-5.
This situation is bound to worsen, and the femi-nazi's aren't gonna like the fall-out.
Re: “I certainly take care of my health. I begin every day with a plateful of fried eggs and bacon, and end it with a midnight snack of chocolate cake.
That way I’m sure to be dead and buried before the commies takeover ... or the machines become intelligent.”
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With a sense of humor like yours, you will probably live a very long time!!!!!
And I have also heard that under this plan, all doctors get the same pay.
All of them.
So a neurosurgeon, who is on call for trauma and has to take part in highly risky surgeries is paid the same as a dermatologist?
Nothing against dermatologists, but this is the tip of an iceberg.
I’m not a big fan of Dick Morris, but he’s been right on the mark on this issue. It’s a doctor shortage, not an insurance problem that we are facing. I’ve been saying that for more than 10 years, and finally you are beginning to see the commentators agree with me. Unfortunately, the guys in Washington are doing absolutely nothing about it. In fact, they have done everything they can get away with in the effort to reduce the number of doctors. They realize that if we fix the problem without socializing the healthcare system, then there will be no need to socialize the healthcare system, so they have done everything they can to prevent the problem from being solved short of that.
It’s purely a matter of supply and demand. If the supply is there, then the price of their services will decline, whether they like it or not. They will work for less, or they won’t work at all. If some of them refuse to work, then the supply will adjust and the price will stabilize, but it’s a self adjusting process, so the price won’t go down unless the supply is there. I think that a lot of neurosurgeons will remain in the business, even if they get paid less than they currently do. The reason they get paid so much now is not simply that few people want to go into this business, or that they aren’t getting paid enough. The main reason is that a concerted effort has been made both by the industry and by the government to reduce the number of doctors.
Licensing is a state matter. For many years, maybe still, foreign medical graduates without licensure were welcome to practice in the VA system. Being federal, they did not come under state licensing jurisdiction. If push comes to shove, you can expect the same kind of waiver to be instituted nationwide under "public option."
Licensing is a state matter. For many years, maybe still, foreign medical graduates without licensure were welcome to practice in the VA system. Being federal, they did not come under state licensing jurisdiction. If push comes to shove, you can expect the same kind of waiver to be instituted nationwide under "public option."
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