The AMA has always sought to limit the numbers of docs to keep earnings up. Maybe they made a deal with the devil to staff government programs with cheap foreign docs.
I remember when docs ran the hospitals with pride and competed for community recognition. It was lots better then.
Do you realize that you have hit on a major area of discrimination against foreign-trained medical personnel?
In most states, a doctor coming from a foreign country cannot even work as a lowly minimum wage paid Medical Assistant with out a certification from some government-sanctioned group.
I know many doctors in the San Diego area who cannot practice any kind of medicine even though their degrees have been certified by an International Evaluation Service (IERF) to be equal to any medical degree given by an American Medical school.
Many of these doctors are doing things like my friend Manuel who is driving a taxi part-time and working at a 7-11 full time to make ends meet.
The requirements placed on foreign doctors are above and beyond those of other professionals.
The requirements are necessary but to get those requirements fulfilled is expensive.
The AMA and the way doctors are chosen for a residency is a restraint of trade as it limits who can apply and where they can get interviews.
On top of that, the process is expensive, especially if like Manuel your working two jobs just to pay rent and put three kids through school.
All this crap about Kalifornia wanting to help get more Spanish speaking doctors into the medical field is just more liberal double speak.
If you live in this state, the majority of new doctors being trained in hospital residency programs just from the valley areas are from countries who hate our guts.
In addition, when training is completed for these new doctors will move on and not work in underserved areas.
I have read posts on residency forums from residents who absolutely hate this country.
Some of the posts are about the kinds of American patients they have to treat and it is enough to make any red blooded American mad as a Hornet.
The doctors from predominately-Muslim countries are very critical of America.
One resident doctor from a Middle Eastern country stated he would never have signed a residency contract with a border hospital had he known the amount of human trash that visited the hospital seeking treatment.
Another doctor from a Middle Eastern country remarked that the patients he had to treat were inferior to his fellow fellow citizens even though his country is considered below third world.
If anyone is interested, I will look up and post some of these residency forum links.
Then those who have critisized my harsh comments can read for themselves what the Indian, Pakistanis, Syrians, Iranian, Chinese and other countries think of their inferior American patients.
I have posted before and gotten flamed about wanting doctors who can communicate with their patients.
If you have doctors able to communicate with patients then you might cut down the enormous costs of having to do over prescribing of unnecessary medical procedures.
Oh, but OKIEDOC you have it wrong, some will say.
These non English-speaking people just need to up and leave and get their medical needs attended in their home country.
We also need to be logical is my answer.
Well to all, many of these people are American citizens and not illegal border jumpers.
Just the lowly opinion of a red state wannabe.
Flame Away