We need to change all parts of the system: For most situations most doctors are over-educated: why should a podiatrist require 8 years of schooling to remove b

We need to change all parts of the system: For most situations most doctors are over-educated: why should a podiatrist require 8 years of schooling to remove bunions or do surgery on an ingrown toenail? Does a general practioner need 12 years of training to prescribe an antibiotic for a severe infection? Are economics, politics, physics, calculus and other courses really necessary for a brain surgeon to do his job or for a nurse practioner to give tetanus shots? 1. Break the entire medical profession down into smaller specialties and provide only the necessary training within those specialties. Sure, some should take the entire 12 years college + med school + internship + specialist training, but most won't. This would open the profession to competition and provide thousands more medical workers.Doctors won't like this: they'll fight it every inch of the way, down to refusing to train people. But it must happen. Perhaps only a massive natural or man-made disaster can overcome the resistance of the AMA and doctors and cause this to happen. 2. Mandate that statistics be maintained and published, complete with names, so you can judge who's good and who isn't; who takes risks and who doesn't; who's pricey and who is cheap. That way you can choose better and practitioners can be more easily regulated. 3. Eliminate HMOs and private insurance companies: they just don't work. The only insurance solution that will work is one wherein the government maintains the insurance pool. As long as insurance companies exist they will continue to cherry-pick patients and use legal tricks to eliminate patients who develop costly medical conditions. 4. Eliminating the HMOs and insurance companies immediately gives a gain equal to the profit of those firms. Increasing efficiency (automation of paperwork, scheduling, etc.) gives further gains. Improved technology can also reduce costs (something rarely pointed out about medicine). And we haven't brought up the drug companies yet. There's lots of room for improvement in the current system, but the doctors, insurance companies, drug companies and the HMOs don't want to change the status quo. And they're the only ones with representatives (their lobbyists) in Washington.