To keep pace with doctor demand, the U.S. will need to train an additional 6,000 to 8,000 each year for the next 20 years.
Posted on 01/26/2011 7:01:41 AM PST by SeekAndFind
As they celebrate their 65th birthdays at the rate of 10,000 a day, Baby Boomers are now approaching the stage of their lives when they will need more medical care. But they—along with everyone else—are going to have a hard time getting appointments.
The doctor shortage was fostered in 1996 when Congress capped the number of new doctors Medicare would pay to train, a practice that continues to this day. Teaching hospitals, which now make up about 10% of hospitals nationwide, depend on those Medicare funds to pay about two-thirds of the cost of doctor-training. (Training costs include residents' salaries, malpractice insurance, equipment, the extra time that teaching procedures add to patient care, as well as the added costs associated with caring for the sickest patients.)
Recently, the President's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform proposed cutting Medicare funding to train doctors even further, by $60 billion through 2020. If this cut is enacted, the doctor shortage would get far worse.
Training new doctors has substantial costs because of all they must learn and how carefully they must be supervised. Without Medicare reimbursements, many hospitals could not afford to maintain these critical training programs. Already, 30% of hospitals lose money, according to the American Hospital Association, and even more barely break even. Across the country, demand for doctors exceeds supply.
The numbers are striking.
Health-care reform will add an estimated 32 million people to the ranks of the insured, driving them to seek medical attention that in the past they may have avoided due to expense. The aging population will also create much greater demand. The number of seniors who need more medical care is expected to soar to 72 million by 2020—nearly double today's number.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
We don’t need to train new doctors, just continue to import them from the third world in bigger numbers. They already make up almost a quarter of our new doctors now.
The simple solution for government bureaucrats is that as Baby Boomers qualify for Medicare, ninety+-year-olds have to get off. There are several ways to arrange this. The most politically acceptable is to ration care by not giving them doctors’ appointments. This is the long-range government health care solution for which articles such as this one are preparing us.
How ObamaCare Guts Medicare
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703649004575437311393854940.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion
WSJ projects an $8 TRILLION GUT over the next 20 years if DEATHCARE is not repealed.
Medicare currently only pay’s penny’s on the $$. More and more doc will dump Medicare patients. More docs will retire as mine plans to do rather than practice under DEATHCARE, he could easily practice 10 more years.
Muslims.
Why should Medicare fund the training of doctors? That is a EDUCATION issue.
“don’t cut my program!”
Pay for your own education! jeesh.
Cut ‘funding to pay for new doctors’?? On Free Republic? Really?
To say we are added 32 million people to the heath care system you must assume that all 32 million have no heath care at all now. We know this is not true. There is a need for more medical people but, We need to use the same numbers when we are talking about Obama care and the need for for doctors. Not to do so puts us on the same level as TV talking heads and democratic pundits.
RE: Pay for your own education! jeesh.
From Forbes :
http://www.forbes.com/2008/05/05/physicians-training-prospects-lead-careers-cx_tw_0505doctors.html
The Association of American Medical Colleges projects that America needs a 30% annual increase in medical-school enrollment in order to keep up with need for doctors. In 2012, compared with 2002, medical-school enrollment will be up 21%.
But for potential physicians, there is a future of looming medical-school debt, which is higher than ever. Students who graduate from a public medical school have a median debt of $100,000; private-school students graduate with a median debt of $135,000, according to a 2003 study by the Association of American Medical Colleges.
Compare that with 1984, when median debt for public-school graduates was $22,000 and private-school students was $27,000.
Monthly payment on a debt of $150,000 at the end of residency at an interest rate of 2.8% is $1,761, according to the study.
The amount of time it takes to pay off debt depends on the specialty. The average physician’s net income, adjusted for inflation, declined 7% between 1995 and 2003, according to the Center for Studying Health System Change. In order to enter the most lucrative specialties, like radiology, ophthalmology, anesthesiology and dermatology, doctors must continue with their training into their 30s. That means they can’t start chipping away at their debt—let alone make money—until a time by which their counterparts in law or business are usually prospering.
Meanwhile, getting sued by a patient is a major concern. Of course, doctors who make fatal mistakes and who are unqualified should be held responsible. But there’s evidence that the bulk of lawsuits brought are frivolous. Of all malpractice lawsuits brought to jury trial in 2004, the defendant won 91% of the time. Only 6% of all lawsuits go to trial; those that aren’t thrown out are settled. Only 27% of all claims made against doctors result in money awarded to the plaintiff, according to Smarr, president of the trade association for medical malpractice companies.
Regardless, doctors need to defend themselves against the possibility of damages—and that’s an extremely expensive proposition. It takes about four-and-a-half years from the start of a lawsuit to the end, and the average cost to the defense in legal fees was $94,284 in 2004, according to the American Medical Association.
Well, they don’t INTEND for Doc to treat patients.
It is their intention to have BUREAUCRATS DETERMINE TREATMENT OF PATIENTS. That’t easy to figure out.
0bamacare incentivizes less care and of course fewer providers means less access, less care and lower total expenditures. Importing doctors and other providers is also much less expensive than publicly financed training programs. Unfortunately their training is less rigorous than US doctors. But form the Left’s point of view, they will be easier to control.
A glut of foreign doctors will also lower physician and provider salaries which will further dissuade US citizens from entering the field. Eventually though, even foreign doctors will not want to come here.
Obama does NOT want American doctors.
He wants imported Islamic “doctors”
who will gladly kill non-Moslems for his 57 states.
They tried this in England...doctors that treat patients in the morning and tried to blow up an airport in the afternoon. They failed because their propane cylinders failed to blow up. Probably didn't learn enough about blowing things up in medical school.
The UK and and Europe have tried many things that don’t work, including socialized medicine. It doesn’t seem to deter or political class from imitating them expecting different results.
But we can RAISE funding FOR train ENGINEERS. Thanks to his promise of "a high speed train in every spot."
"To keep pace with doctor demand, the U.S. will need to train an additional 6,000 to 8,000 physician assistants and nurse practicioners each year for the next 20 years. "
There I fixed it. I think PA's and LNP's are great and in many cases are perfectly adequate for routine needs. However they are not physicians. While they must be supervised by an MD or DO now, in future they will be your only provider. BTW that word "provider" has always bugged me. That was intentional to change the way we look at our "caregiver"! No longer do you see a "Doctor" but a "provider" or "caregiver" who can be anything the government ministry of truth determines is best for you.
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