We have about 50 million uninsured with another 50 million underinsured in the US. On top of that medicaid pays such low rates that the 40-50 million who have that can have trouble finding doctors who will accept it. So over half the country has issues with medical access. Plus even if you have a good private plan, there is no guarantee they won’t throw up as many roadblocks as possible if you try to get medical care.
Having said that, primary care is cheap. Even when I am uninsured, I am always able to find an MD or NP who would offer me primary care for $100 or less per visit.
I believe we have a shortage of primary medical professionals. But our system seems to really put up roadblocks in front of more than half of the country when it comes to access to medical care, so arguably nearly half the country isn’t getting the quantity of care they/we might want otherwise if we had a system more like what they have in Europe.
There are tons of qualified applicants in the US who would make fine doctors but there is a cap system on how many the med schools will accept and how many residencies there are. So I don’t see why importation is necessary if we need more physicians. Just lift the cap a bit.
Plus you have the moral issue of brain drain, drawing medical professionals from poor parts of Africa and Asia to work in the US. There are supposedly more Ethiopian physicians in Chicago than Ethiopian physicians in Ethiopia. With remittances maybe they can support their family, but you have to question pulling physicians out of a country with such major health problems so they can cater to a nation that already has a high level of medical care.
Increasing the class sizes of US medical schools (or building new schools) will cost more money than allowing foreign MDs to immigrate here. Guess which approach a system primarily concerned with controlling healthcare costs is likely to prefer?
Valid point - fewer and fewer family care doctors will accept Medicare patients as it is.
Another consideration…how many senior/highly experienced doctors will decide time has come to just hang up the stethoscope rather than provide care under a UHC system?
I think there’s already enough doctors in the USA for UHC. If you look at the ‘phyusician density’ in the US it’s pretty simalir to many other Western coutnries which already have UHC. For example Canada actually has a slightly lower physician density than the USA.
In the UK medicine is the hardest course to get on at university, due tot he number of people who want to do it.
A doctor in UHC has a gu\ranteed very good income and whilst they might not earn the mega-bucks that are possible in private healthcare (though remember UHC does not mean that private healthcare does not exist in parallel), it’s still worth the time.Plus I think it’s wrong to think purely about money, if you’re purely motivated by money you’re not suited to medicine anyway.
Based on the lead time already required to make an appointment to see one, I have to disagree. But I guess I’m old hat in wanting to see the same doctor every time instead of just going to the Concentra type drop-in clinic and take your chances.
Do we have enough medical training for UHC? No, probably not. But that’s okay, because we don’t have enough medical training in some areasfor the system we have now. No matter what happens with the economics and politics of health care in this country, we’ve got to address the PCPgap sooner or later. And, as already mentioned, Physician Assistants and Advanced Practiced Nursingare on the rise, precisely because there aren’t enough GP’s and FP’s with MD’s to go around.
The debate over whether or not there’s a nursing shortage still going on is hot, and it really depends on how you define “shortage”. When I decided to go to nursing school 5 or 6 years ago, there was no doubt that there was a shortage - new graduate nurses were being given ridiculous signing bonuses because nurses were in such high demand and they just needed people with a pulse on the floor. Now…not so much. But it’s not because there’s a glut of nurses and the hospitals don’t need to hire more - they do need to hire them. But they have no money to pay them. Nearly all of the hospitals around here still have some form of hiring freeze or extreme slow down, despite the need for more nurses. And it’s even worse for new graduate RNs, who are, for once, experiencing the same “I need experience to get a job, but I need a job to get experience!” dilemma that other fields see. I’ve had no nibbles on my applications so far. Even knowing someone doesn’t always help; one of my RN friends has been begging me to apply at her ER because they’re short 6 nurses. I did, and now her manager is telling her, “Look, I’m not hiring any new grads anymore. They come, they get their year of ER training and experience and they quit. I can hire an experienced nurse, and she’ll probably quit in a year, too, but I won’t have to pay to train her.”
Why are more experienced RN’s looking for work now than were 6 years ago? Many of them have been retired or semi-retired or working Registry for the last 10 years, and now have to look for full time work as their spouses are laid off or their retirement investments tanked.
So…the answer to the question in the OP is not a simple one, and it doesn’t have to do only with medical training and UHC, but with our current economic crisis, as well. Nurses and doctors do not work and live in a vacuum.
We already have massive importation of foreign MDs, and it’s pretty fucking crass to pretend they don’t speak English, especially for someone like you who is already in the industry.
Living in a country with approximately the same number of doctors per head and UHC I have to disagree. I’ve seen the same doctor (the only exceptions were when he was on holiday and I wanted to see another doctor) for the last 28 years and I can usually arrange an appointment for the next day.
I honestly don’t see what the debate is here, there’s no real disparity between the USA and many other western countries with UHC in terms of the number of doctors per head. Are there enough doctors in the USA for UHC? - Yes.
No, they don’t, and I can speak with some authority here since both parents have practiced medicine in the US and UK.
General practitioners earn significantly more in the UK, at least under the Primary Care Trust system. However, specialists in almost every field earn significantly less.
You know what? I’d be totally OK with that - we should be paying our primary care docs more to make that specialty more attractive, because we need more of them. Paying the specialists a little less, and making those areas just a bit less attractive, might also help tip the balance.
I’ve had probably a half dozen Indian doctors over my life. The only time I ever had trouble understanding their English was when I was 6 and unfamiliar with the accent. I just don’t perceive it as a problem.
Now, my current doctor, who is Indian, has English writing I can’t distinguish from Sanskrit. That could be a problem, except it’s the pharmacist who has to read the Rx, not me, and she seems to manage fairly well.
Just to note that this is only true for the particular UK system of UHC. French doctors don’t get paid (except in public hospitals, obviously), they’re private practitionners.
It’s good to remember that different countries have very diffferent UHC systems, although most people in the USA think of the British and Canadian model, since those are the countries they’re the most familiar with.
You’d really need someone who knows the intricies of UK medical education and it’s fnding to know the exact situation, but suffice to say certainly it is not that way.
Only the very brightest and hardworking people in the UK can do a medicine degree in the UK. You need near-perfect grades to even stand a chance.
