Re: America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 - The USCHO debates
I don't know how many of you out there spend time on CNN, but I think it's mostly time on Pravda and World Net Daily around here. At any rate, and interesting take from a NH primary care physician who's been watching the Massachusetts medical situation since they instituted their own attempt at universal health care.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/08/20/pho.doctor.shortage/index.html
He obviously wants universal coverage, but doesn't think the current medical system could handle it, given what he's seen out of MA.
Good article. I'll add the following points to the idea of a shortage of providers:
1) The doctor glosses over a bit about nurse practicioners and others seeing patients. That's been my experience with my provider, and its usually the same or next day that I've gotten an appointment. That has to be factored in when discussing any shortage.
2) Access can also be expanded by such things as the clinics CVS wants to set up in their stores to handle some care. There's a move to do this in Boston, but I believe the high school dropout, 500 year incumbent mayor is opposed to it for reasons I'm not sure of, and nothing gets done in the city without his approval. Anyway, the point is this will help immeasurably with access to care.
3) Lastly, I haven't seen this subject brought up yet, but highly qualified people educating in other countries seem to encounter a lot of hoops trying to get certified/hired/etc in this country. A good friend of mine, highly educated (he was from Pakistan but I forget what university he went to) had to wait years to get a job a as a doctor, and in the meantime was doing ridiculously low level work. Obviously the training needs to be comparable, but perhaps this is an area that can be looked at to help on the doctor shortfall front.
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Moving on from the article, what I'm seeing from some posters here is the notion that we'd like to cover more people, but we can't because of shortages or something else. What then, may I ask, is your solution to covering more people? If this doctor shortfall comes to pass, should we kick millions more off of insurance to maintain current doctor/patient ratios??? Do any of you advocating this currently not have insurance? Are you in favor of locking in the current level of insured at its current #, and then you can only get insurance if somebody else loses it?
I ask all this because what happens when the economy picks up and millions more people are covered through their employers? Won't the doctor shortage just get worse? Perhaps addressing that issue needs to happen anyway, and not covering people isn't a solution after all.
