[NYGUY]

Originally Posted by golfing eagles

It's just my opinion, but here is my basis:

1) there is a growing shortage of doctors, especially in primary care. If the Obamacare dream of covering everyone comes to fruition, that's 40+ million more patients in need of primary care with less doctors

2) When I first started medical school in 1978, there were 129,000 American applicants for 17,000 seats. Last I saw numbers about 6 years ago, there were 23,000 applicants for the same 17K seats. Due to a variety of economic and social changes, the talent pool is being diluted, and therefore the "average" physician probably starts out with lower qualifications than in the past.

3) Our residency programs cannot fill with American graduates, therefore the programs are getting filled with FMGs, 5th pathway graduates, and previous practitioners from abroad. Some are good, some are not.

4) Medicare is going bankrupt, some insurers are dropping out of the medicare market, and the cost keeps going up. Add to that the cost of 40+ million new "insurees" that for the most part are subsidized, the cost of advanced technology, the aging of the baby boomers, and the unfunded liabilities of Obamacare. This means either raising taxes to pay for all this, or the dreaded "R" word---rationing health care like they do in Europe. I'm not sure Americans will stand for either.

5) Probably nothing is being done because no one knows what to do, or no one can agree on it, or the issue is too politically charged for any elected official to want to take the lead on it

6) I'm not sure some, if not all of this has been scripted to cause a collapse of our healthcare system so as to carve a path for the Holy Grail of the left---socialized medicine, which is gaining popularity with younger voters anyway. I hope they eventually realized that "Medicare for All" really means VA style healthcare for all, with the attendant triple the cost bureaucracy and one third the efficiency of all government programs. The system would work much better as a benign dictatorship, as long as I am the dictator

Good analysis!!