You are right.We need thousands more doctors. We have allowed them to limit med school enrollment to nothing. Competition will drive costs down.
Agreed, entirely. These days, when one goes to the doctor, they are more likely to see a youthful nurse practitioner or an import, that is, a doctor from India or Syria or...
That is nothing against Dr.'s from other countries in terms of ability -- some are great -- but many are simply difficult to understand due to heavy accents and such. Many nurse practitioners are very dedicated people too, but most just don't have the depth of knowledge, nor experience, of good doctors. I have to take my Mom to her PCP fairly often these days, and the difference between seeing the nurse practitioner vs. her doctor, whom my Mom has been with for many years, is striking.
Then there is going to the hospital, where you run into (these days) rotating, overworked staffs (including particularly the hospitalists) and no involvement of the PCP's. Continuity of care and actual understanding in depth of what's going on with the patient suffers horribly. I honestly think that shortened my Dad's life, and certainly what "quality" time he had left, by at least a couple years. But, what the heck could I do about it? NADA. It's like fighting City Hall, but 10x worse, and 100x more demoralizing.
This will take a lot of grief and a long time to fix -- at least a generation -- if it ever does get fixed.