The Big Health Care Mystery – Where Are The Doctors?
Yes, there is money in one of the health care bills to help train new doctors, but hardly enough. So the problem remains and also dismissed by architects of health care legislation.
The nation is facing a severe shortage of primary care doctors. Right now, scared away by malpractice insurance, there are simply not enough doctors around in Pennsylvania to to treat the current load of patients. What the heck is going to happen when 39 million new Americans are added to the health care rolls? I’ll tell you what’s going to happen – chaos.
This extraordinary lack of judgment on the part of lawmakers means that we are heading on a collision course for a medical crisis bigger than the one we are facing. Until Congress understands the nature of our doctor shortage and figures out a way to fix it, any health care reform will be dangerous at best. Is there anyone out there with an answer?
TIGER TALK-
The Golf Digest magazine reports that after word of his sexual affairs surfaced, Tiger Woods received words of encouragement from President Obama and former President Clinton. In a journalistic understatement, the magazine said that Mr. Clinton’s ” experience might be particularly instructive.”
Comments(18)
If you build it, they will come.
Is there anyone out there with an answer ? I’m not sure what the question is.If it’s about doctors,who didn’t see that one coming ?
Bill Clinton really called Tiger Woods ? Too funny,I’d love to see the transcript of that phone call.
Larry, Golf Digest recanted the Obama story. Apparently the reporter for the story went to the same journalism school as you. You guys probably spent too much time studying teleprompter 101. Maybe you should take a little more time between posts so you don’t continue to embarrass yourself.
Larry did you ever think that “the extraordinary lack of judgement on the part of lawmakers” is why most Americans don’t want to turn over one sixth of the economy to the government lawmakers? Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid don’t have the ability to run Congress let alone the Healthcare Indutry.
I have the answer Larry and its
Advanced Practice Nursing.
Nurse Practioners will fill the void
at lower cost and often at higher
standards of care.
Further, the doctor shortage is a myth
propogated by the AMA. Medical schools
turn dowm thousands of qualified appicants
every year. What you need to worry about is
finding workers to wipe your rear end and
push you in a wheel chair when in a nursing
home. Americans are not willing to do that
for reasonable wages, and it will require
massive immigration to supply those workers.
Haiti will be a wonderful source of labor and
a solution to poverty there. They will gladly
take $8 an hour on work visas to care for elederly
white folks who are milking social security and
Medicare for way more than they ever paid in.
Put all the elders whose lifeclocks turn black into the Carousel for renewal. That will keep them from consuming resources that the rest of us need. You know your President Obama is proposing such death panels even as you are reading this.
Sriously, Larry we need mre PAs out there to handle the everyday conditions presented to HMO doctors. When I was in an HMO all that my primary physian did was write referrals.
The KISS Principle applies here (Keep It Simple Stupid). Keep Government as far away from Healthcare as possible. Do not let bureaucrats anywhere near medical decisions. Leave medical decisions to professionals. Limit tort liability on doctors. Malpractice Insurance for doctors (currently $250K for OB/GYN delivery doctors) will drop as a result of tort limits. Savings passed along to patients. Healthcare costs drops. Everyone is happy except those trying to screw doctors.
Real Question: Why is this consistently left out of the Democrats plan?
Real Answer: Because many of them were funded by ambulence chasing lawyers like John Lowlife Edwards.
Why is Larry now so preoccupied with Tiger Woods? Perhaps he is still in erotic arousal from the wooden spoon paddling this morning…
The only thing Bill Clinton is qualified to give advice on is BJs in the Oval Office. May be eating Big Macs while jogging.
In Canada under their “superior” Government run Healthcare system, doctors generally make less than $100K US. The best and brightest in Canada go into Dentistry instead. They can make $250-300K US per year in Dentistry.
Think we are having trouble attracting doctors now, what until ObamaCare hits the street.
You’ll be visiting Dr Don Rose or Dr Demento instead.
I like to pussy foot around on issues, so I really don’t know what to say about Larry’s post, but let me try. He probably has dinner with friends who are doctors and they go off about this issue to him all the time and he accepts what they tell him as Gospel truth, why check the facts? He doesn’t even bother to ask why all of his friends are obsessed about their children becoming doctors too. Are these people that stupid that they would guide children toward and finace hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical school if the outcome of becoming a doctor was so economically unviable. The ones who cant make medical school in the U.S. go to the Islands or become chiroprators and podiatrists. His fear mongering of a doctor shortage is such a joke, and that’s coming from someone who likes to pussy foot around about issues!
My doctor does not accept insurance of any
kind, he runs a cash only practice and has
more full paying customers than he can handle
and no problem covering his malpractice insurance.
He is a great doctor and people will pay for
quality and not to be rushed or treated abruptly.
Its called the free market Larry. You pay cash
to have your dog groomed and for Vet care, why
Won’t you pay your medical doctor on the same
basis that you pay for animal care? No, most
people want free or cut rate prices from doctors.
They pay their car mechanic $1200 for repairs they
Don’t even understand, but God forbid they pay
a doctor more than $100 bucks for any service.
You are lucky if you get 5 minutes with your doctor. They book so many patients per day that they can barely see them all. It’s all about volume and days off. They have a big nut to pay off in terms of tort insurance and they have to scramble to make their $250K per year.
I hope your cash transaction doctor gives you more than the bum’s rush.
That’s the beauty of it OOOJ, plenty of time
with the doctor. Because he no longer has to
pay staff to file insurance claims and fight
with them, he cuts substantial overhead. Also
he makes more per visit because the price is not
dictated be lower insurance reimbursement which
drives doctors to make up their income with
patient volume. Cash only doctors is the wave of
the future and its based on the same model used
by vetinarians and auto mechanics.
Larry, I have
Hey Larry I’ve got anew mystery for you to solve. What is Charlie Rangel going to do, now that he has to pay his taxes?
Rangel pussy footed around about paying his taxes. It was fun to see how Pelosi handled him with kid gloves in not asking him to step down, but four years ago with a Republican under similar scrutiny she was wanting to drain a swamp. Maybe she did drain it and exposed charlie at the very bottom
All doctors have to complete a 3 to 7 year residency before they can practice medicine. Currently, the Federal Government pays for around 97% of the total cost of this training by allowing it to be billed as an overhead expense to medicare.
The Federal Government artificially restricts the supply of doctors by restricting the amount of money they appropriate each year for residency training of doctors. In 2010 only 2/3 of the doctors who were eligible to begin residency training were able to find positions. The rest of these doctors were forced to wait until 2011 in the hope of obtaining a position. Many of these doctors will never be able to practice medicine since they will try year after year to obtain a residency and never be successful. This is a travesty.
The only way the US will be able to supply enough doctors to treat the millions of new patients the health care bill will create is for the federal government to assure that all qualified medical school graduates are guaranteed a residency training position. Since it takes at least 3 years to train a family medicine doctor the government needs to provide millions of dollars in funding this year so that tens of thousands of doctors can immediately begin training. Otherwise, if we wait for medical schools to ramp up enrollments and train new doctors and then have them go to residencies it will take a decade to created enough doctors to meet current demand.