Quote:
Originally Posted by dbussone
GE - I would add that the Feds also have a significant hand in this situation. Despite the fact that our country's population is growing, and the number of elderly is increasing, the Feds capped the number of residency positions in the late '90s. This is simply a matter of money. The Feds partially reimburse teaching hospitals for the cost of training physician so they capped the number of available slots to reduce future expenses. In essence there is an artificial choke point on the training of physicians regardless of current or future need IMO.
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The FEDS are a whole other chapter in this, but yes, they did cap residency support, but this was for specialty residencies while continuing to support primary care residencies. Of course, the flaw here was that 3 years of internal medicine is required prior to a specialty. They did change many specialty fellowships from 2 to 3 years, so the number of specialists finishing went down. I don't think there is much of a choke point---most residency programs cannot fill their slots with American graduates, hence the escalating need for patients to be "multi-lingual"
At the same time,
IF Obamacare succeeds in bringing in 40 million new patients, the demand will be far greater