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I think something like this is inevitable in our country, no matter how much primary care doctors dread it. We simply will not have enough of them to care for e
by samd 17y ago
I think something like this is inevitable in our country, no matter how much primary care doctors dread it. We simply will not have enough of them to care for everybody in even the very limited way they do now. We are all used to the hour long waits and 10 minute sessions with our swamped primary care doctors. That will only get worse when tens of millions of previously uninsured people enter the system. The amount of doctors produced by our medical schools has remained nearly constant for more than a decade, and new openings add only about 100 doctors per year (about 1 school per year). We need to either pay primary care doctors more money to draw doctors in from the specialties, add a lot more medical schools, or somehow use technology to make health care much more efficient. Since the first two have been available options for years without being implemented, I think we will fall back on the last one.
- ugh 17y agoThat’s odd. I know long waits (not quite ten hours, maybe one, two or three) from specialized doctors here in Germany, not ever primary care doctors. I have to wait maybe thirty minutes for my primary doctor, probably not at all if I call him up in the morning and go there later the day or the next day. I know that the reverse must also be true for some rural areas in East Germany, an unattractive area with low pay and hard work where the doctors are slowly dying out and nobody wants to replace them, but that really seems limited to rural East Germany. Why is that?
- dantheman 17y agoThe AMA has actually reduced the number of medical schools in order to control the doctor supply. The AMA is a cartel and nothing more. Lots of people want to go to medical school, but are unable to.