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So within 10-15 years, your doctor will most likely be the dropout of a 3rd-rate med school in India or a Mexican immigrant who completed a couple years of training at community college, because those are the only type of people who'll be willing to work for dismal wages and long hours.
But what are all the young docs going to do? I have a friend who just graduated med school and he's already $500,000 in debt from educational loans. I can't really see all these young docs quitting the profession and working at Arby's or Target. They also can't go back to college for a different degree because they already maxed out their eligible borrowing amounts from Federal Student Aid programs. Far as I know, you can't discharge $500K in school loans through bankruptcy court, right?
So within 10-15 years, your doctor will most likely be the dropout of a 3rd-rate med school in India or a Mexican immigrant who completed a couple years of training at community college, because those are the only type of people who'll be willing to work for dismal wages and long hours.
But what are all the young docs going to do? I have a friend who just graduated med school and he's already $500,000 in debt from educational loans. I can't really see all these young docs quitting the profession and working at Arby's or Target. They also can't go back to college for a different degree because they already maxed out their eligible borrowing amounts from Federal Student Aid programs. Far as I know, you can't discharge $500K in school loans through bankruptcy court, right?
deseret news? might as well read the enquirer. the title doesn't even come near to reflecting info in the report cited in the compiled story.
So within 10-15 years, your doctor will most likely be the dropout of a 3rd-rate med school in India or a Mexican immigrant who completed a couple years of training at community college, because those are the only type of people who'll be willing to work for dismal wages and long hours.
It's already happening. My late Grandmother had the Cadillac of private insurance plans and when she had to be hospitalized while she was at her winter home in Naples, FL, the incompetence of the health care "professionals" was staggering. She had one Haitian nurse who couldn't do a blood draw, another who couldn't get the IV in and a doctor who barely spoke English. This is what we have to look forward to.
The Deseret News (www.deseretnews.com) is the first news organization and the longest continuously-operating business in the state of Utah. Owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, The Deseret News offers news, information, commentary, and analysis from an award-winning and experienced team of reporters, editors, columnists, and bloggers. Its mission is to be a leading news brand for faith and family oriented audiences in Utah and around the world.
This story is from April 2013. The main talking points are a 2013 Deloitte survey of Doctors. It didn't even mention the Affordable Care Act in the story, which went into effect in 2014.
Why post a story and say Obamacare is making doctors bankrupt in 2013, when there was no Obamacare back then?
Quote:
Originally Posted by http://www.deseretnews.com/
Published: Tuesday, April 9 2013 6:00 a.m. MDT
Last edited by move4ward; 02-11-2015 at 06:54 PM..
This has been a problem brewing for a while, even before the ACA was passed. You have a large bubble of physicians nearing retirement age and the increased liability, bureaucracy and debt, coupled with decreasing reimbursement for physicians is starting to deter good people from going into medicine, certainly from going into primary care fields (where it's not unusual for a physician to take home in the range of $100-150K after expenses).
However, a debt burden of $500K seems very high. That is double the average debt for a medical student. OP, why did your friend accumulate so much debt? This is no different from someone choosing to go to an expensive private school versus a State school for college. I think there is an element of caveat emptor involved. He knew what he was getting into.
The bigger problem, as alluded to in the article, is that it takes a long time to create a physician- at minimum 4 years of college, 4 years of med school and 3 years of residency, and that is the bare minimum. We need more schools and training programs in this country, but they are very difficult to create. Med schools are affiliated with Universities, most of which (especially public ones) don't have enough money. Then, you have to build them, and find faculty for them and most faculty for the general sciences portion of medical school are not practicing physicians, they are scientists, who themselves are all leaving their professions due to retirement. So, you can see how even the reality of getting people though medical school is becoming increasingly hard.
Then, once you finish Med school, you need to match into a residency program to do your training. What is that student with the $500K debt to do? Does he pick Family Practice, Internal Medicine or Pediatrics where the net income is maybe $150K, or does he try and go into a higher paying specialty? Of course, he picks the latter....or at least tries to. You see, you can't just decide what specialty to go into to. Your board scores, grades, med school rep etc all determine how competitive you are and what specialty you can match to. The better an applicant you are, the more likely you can get a very competitive residency like Plastic surgery, Orthopaedics, Dermatology (because of the easy lifestyle) etc. The less competitive you are, the more likely you are to end up in Primary Care. At the end of the day, there are more training programs than there are graduates of US Allopathic Medical schools (M.D.), so those programs fill with less desirable candidates, and so on and so forth.
Even with all the complaints, medicine is still a good profession that allows for a high income potential in an almost recession proof career (depending on your specialty), a great deal of autonomy, and the ability to help others. It will continue to attract talent, as long as those things are present. But when they are not, when reimbursements continue to decline, when states lack tort reform, when huge portions of patient populations do not pay for their care or are underinsured, physicians will flee and leave the work to lesser trained individuals, which is already happening in many areas.
The article you posted is pretty alarmist, and the specific problem it talks about has absolutely nothing to do with "Obamacare". It has to do with Medicaid/Medicare reimbursement rates and the "doc fix" that for decades was automatically passed by Congress.
"Obamacare" increased reimbursement rates for 2013 and 2014, but that was it. Obama asked Congress to continue the same increase for 2015, but Republicans in Congress refused to consider it (basically because Obama suggested it).
At this point Republicans are saying they would consider returning to how the doc fix was handled for decades, but they want something in return. They've suggested shutting down the EPA or approval for the Keystone pipeline. Basically the way we've normally handled funding for healthcare is being used as a political bargaining chip. Obamacare could go away tomorrow and we'd still be in the same exact place on this issue (which isn't as bad as the article makes it out to be).
Hmmm. So one third of US doctors are over 55 and are expected to retire in the next 10-15 years. Isn't that true of almost everyone over 55?
BTW the primary reference was Medicare (which is NOT ACA) and ts payments for cardiology treatment.
No one is allowed to practice medicine in the US if they've graduated from a foreign medical school unless they have passed some very difficult US medical examinations first.
Sounds like you are just trying to pass on unfounded rumors.
Even if someone went to both the most expensive college and most expensive medical school in the country and had to pay full price for both, the bill would be less than $400K.
She had one Haitian nurse who couldn't do a blood draw, another who couldn't get the IV in and a doctor who barely spoke English. This is what we have to look forward to.
I'm pretty sure this describes at least 50% of the "top-notch" healthcare in most U.S. hospitals.
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