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Is anyone here able to get a call back from their doctor in two hours or less? I am referring to actually speaking to a physician, not a nurse or medical assistant?
We need to cut healthcare costs and a good place to start is to train more doctors. That is one investment I wouldn't mind funding with my tax dollars.
Imagine: more doctors, more competition amongst them, greater availability and more time the doctor spends with patients instead of 10 minutes at the most.
I agree, the problem is there are not enough allopathic medical schools to train them. There are just a few thousand slots for first years every fall. Meanwhile, osteopathic med schools are growing by leaps and bounds, and offshore medical schools are exploding too.
An interim measure that can be done right now would be to allow non-physician providers (nurse practitioners, PAs, etc.) to practice more medicine, like write prescriptions and do minor office procedures. The AMA doesn't want this, for obvious reasons.
The new federal health-care law has raised the stakes for hospitals and schools already scrambling to train more doctors.
Experts warn there won't be enough doctors to treat the millions of people newly insured under the law. At current graduation and training rates, the nation could face a shortage of as many as 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.
Dick Morris harped on this during the EARLY Obamacare debate before it was passed. He said at the time, of course there would have to be rationing if you are adding all of these people and there aren't enough doctors.
Speaking of people who have been right on certain issues, Glenn Beck was laughed at when a few months ago he said there would be steep food price hikes and food shortages and people should start storing food. Looks like he was right, too.
There are more than enough doctors. The problem is that most of them are specialists where the big bucks are. The shortage is in General Practitioners where the big bucks aren't. Simple human greed.
Let's see how greedy you'd become if you had massive student loans after 12 years of schooling plus paying premiums on your malpractice insurance.
When your medical schools are more worried about racial promotion vs. getting enough well trained doctors out then thats the start of the problem.
No offense, but this is just silly. I can't speak for all medical schools, but my brother is a third year and at his school if someone doesn't pass a class they get one shot to repeat it and then they're asked to leave the program. It doesn't matter if the student is white, black, brown, or purple.
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I would also suggest that if more PCPs are required, incentives need to be given to get the good doctors into family practice. Student loan debt (as mentioned by several posters) is staggering by the time training is complete. Irrespective of greed or selflessness, it is impractical to think that after years of training and accruing debt, doctors will not try to find employment that will allow them to pay back their debts and also have a halfway decent quality of life.
Interesting take on this issue.
But it's wrong.
I administered the MCAT for years. No one gets into med school without passing the MCAT.
Nice attempt at marginalizing minorities who meet the qualifications for school.
There are a finite number of seats for courses of study to be a medically trained professional.
That could be alleviated if there were more med schools, or by opening the market to doctors from other countries.
If you administered it you should know there is no "passing" or "failing".
If you paid attention you'd ask youself why this is acceptable:
So please, explain to us how there is no racial preferences in medical school admissions. 50-60% parity between races for thousands of applicants is just what, a statistical anomoly? I love when people talk about things when the facts are staring them right there in the face. Of course you could always just look at that SCOTUS ruling that affirmed medical/law schools can for some silly reason. I guess some people get to be more "equal" then others.
So...the US pays doctors better than other countries -by a wide margin.
The US is facing a shortage of doctors.
Many other nations have a sufficiency or surplus of skilled doctors.
Honestly, I'd expect the market to sort this one out quite quickly. If not, someone has been messing with it.
You "Econ 101" types crack me up. The free market solves everything. . . not.
Quote:
Originally Posted by zentropa
I agree, the problem is there are not enough allopathic medical schools to train them. There are just a few thousand slots for first years every fall. Meanwhile, osteopathic med schools are growing by leaps and bounds, and offshore medical schools are exploding too.
An interim measure that can be done right now would be to allow non-physician providers (nurse practitioners, PAs, etc.) to practice more medicine, like write prescriptions and do minor office procedures. The AMA doesn't want this, for obvious reasons.
Where have you been for the last 40 years or so? This is going on right now.
Yeah, who needs standards anyway? This is not to say I think all Latin-American trained doctors are incompetent, but there do need to be standards.
Spain's imported sizeable numbers of Argentine doctors for their national health system to serve isolated rural communities. That's an example of a developed country letting Latin American trained doctors practiced (although in the case of Argentina the standards are probably up to the levels of Spain or the US)
Those laws in many US states were NOT put in for the sake of standards. They were largely put in right after the Cuban Revolution for the sake of keeping Cuban emigre doctors from competing with the AMA's membership.
Right now there are large numbers of doctors living in the violence torn cities of northern Mexico who'd love to be able to get out and be able to practice in the US. Americans used to go to many of said doctors frequently before narcoviolence in Mexico became as bad as it is now. Or doctors in Venezuela who'd love to get away from the violence and the unpredictable autocratic rule of Hugo and practice in the US. We're not talking about rural people with little education here.
II guess some people get to be more "equal" then others.
Yes we've ALWAYS had that problem in this country. Funny that most people weren't complaining about it until after the Civil Rights Movement.
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