You’re right. I appreciate your comment. I allowed my own frustration with the obvious problems around me to cloud my comments. Here, hoping to clarify my orig

You’re right. I appreciate your comment. I allowed my own frustration with the obvious problems around me to cloud my comments. Here, hoping to clarify my original argument: Adding healthcare services by producing more physicians, costly in training and by their later contribution through a perverse incentive system, does not appear to be the simple answer. In addition, is there a physician shortage [1] or not [2]? I recommended more midlevel providers, who are capable of handling a vast majority of medical problems. To suggest that only professionals with years of training and paid an exorbitant rate can do this, is not to understand what physicians do or midlevel providers’ capability. It is another way of buying into the self-serving mantra promulgated by medical boards and organizations: Only a doctor knows and, furthermore, needs to be board certified. Depending on the state, multiple nurse practitioners and physician assistants can be supervised remotely by one physician. Add telemedicine and other online tools to this partnership and you’ve got a pretty robust team able to care for a much larger population than one physician could. A zillion other tweaks to the system, and all of a sudden efficiency starts to make an impact. But some artificial barriers must be broken in the process (e.g., coordinated information dissemination between health professionals). [1] https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/press-releases/new-findings-confirm-predictions-physician-shortage https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/press-releases/new-findin... [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26177529 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26177529 Edit: For now and the near future, there are procedures that only physicians can perform (e.g., surgery mostly). This is not true in most general medical care and even in specialized care.