Health Care Reform and Doctors

Finally there is some discussion in the big media about the shortage of Primary Care Physicians and the stalling effort to reform and improve the health care system in the U.S.  Since my oldest daughter has decided to go to medical school, I have been thinking about the choice she will eventually have to make as to what area of medicine to practice in.  She seems to be most interested in a general practice area or pediatrics, both of which have are said to get chosen by declining numbers of new doctors.  The reason is simple.  Doctors now leave medical school with crushing levels of student loan debt.  With the average age of medical school graduates now approaching 30 years old, and then having another 4 to 8 years of residency, starting in practice in your mid-thirties with an average school debt of $130,000, it is easy to see why doctors choose to enter specialty areas where they earn 3, 4, or 5 times the income of primary care doctors.

If the U.S. health care system is to be fixed, increasing the number primary care physicians will be a big part of the fix.  Incentives must be put in place now to let current students see there will be help available if the choose to practice in the most needed areas of medicine.  Because becoming an M.D is such a long and arduous process, and medical students often tend to be focused, goal oriented people, letting them know early in their education that they have viable options to practice primary care is critically important.

One of the recent articles can be read at this link.  Let’s hope that our President and his political cohorts make this a part of  any reform.  Without a solution to this particular health care delivery problem, providing primary care to all people will be impossible.