Academic

HEY, I?VE GOT AN IDEA: Make the practice of medicine more rewarding! Shortage of Doctors Proves Ob?

By Glenn Reynolds

HEY, I’VE GOT AN IDEA: Make the practice of medicine more rewarding! Shortage of Doctors Proves Obstacle to Obama Goals. Naah. That approach would make too much sense.

But when Obama says ?We?re not producing enough primary care physicians,? he’s making a mistake. We don’t produce doctors. They’re not widgets. People choose to become doctors — or something else — based on their analysis of what will produce the best life. Medicine has gotten less pleasant, and less financially rewarding, really, over the past several decades as it’s become more bureaucratized and subject to the whims of third-party payors. So will Obama’s plan fix that? Seems doubtful. Will he recognize that you don’t produce doctors the way you produce, say, cars? That’s doubtful, too.

UPDATE: James Joyner emails:

While the things you cite may be causing more physicians to retire early we’re not having trouble attracting people to the profession. The problem is that the AMA has created a cartel with the medical schools, creating severe barriers to entry. The number of slots has remained essentially static despite a population that has nearly doubled in forty years. We’re having to import docs from abroad just to keep up.

That’s a fair point, and there’s no good justification for those limits. On the other hand, as the article linked above notes, poor working conditions and insufficient pay are pushing people out, and steering them to specialties other than the internist/family practice primary care doctors that we need the most.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader James Ellison writes:

As a physician in practice for over 25 years, I must comment.

Medical schools are actually having trouble filling the available slots they have so more schools won’t necessarily make for better care.
Much of “primary care” could be handled by nurse practitioners but patients would need to get used to not seeing “the doctor.”
Last time I checked, there were surveys that reported about 2/3 of physicians actively discouraged their children from going into medicine.

Yeah, I wouldn’t encourage the Insta-Daughter to go to med school.

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on April 27, 2009 (boomark / email).