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Doctor Shortage Will Lead to Limited Access
May 18, 2010
Health care experts continue to sound the alarm about the negative effects of Obamacare, this time pointing to the worsening shortage of primary care physicians – the very doctors who will be tasked with overseeing care for the 30 million newly insured.
For many years the US has faced a shortage of doctors; the new health bill will push the shortage to unprecedented levels. At a time when less than 10 percent of all medical school graduates choose primary care fields and 30 percent of practicing doctors say they plan to leave the health care field or retire early as health care reform begins to take effect, experts say Americans will see access limited, especially to family doctors.
Family doctors are often the first line of defense in the medical community. Responding to general needs, they spend most of their time not only seeing patients, but writing prescriptions, reviewing x-rays, consulting with specialists, and interpreting test results. While primary care physicians play one of the most critical roles in the ongoing health care of individuals, their compensation is far less than many of their specialist colleagues, one of the key reasons why few medical students choose primary care fields such as pediatrics.
Analysts say these doctors, who will soon be tasked with the additional duty of overseeing preventive medicine, need to be compensated for all they do, not just for the number of patients they see. On average, primary care physicians make $100,000 less per year than specialists. And Obamacare does little to improve the situation.
The bill does include a 10% Medicare pay bump to medical students who choose a primary care field, but medical schools caution it will still be some time before students can take advantage of that offer. Once students complete medical school, they must find a residency – an increasingly difficult task since the Democratic Congress failed to provide hospitals with increased funding for internships in their bill. The Association of American Medical Colleges says there will certainly be a bottleneck effect.
President Obama may have succeeded in expanding insurance coverage, but he and his Congress have done little to ensure Americans will actually have access to care.
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