Primary Care, Family Doctors Becoming Rare-

Primary care doctors are the ones who take care of you and your family when your sick. If you have a sinus infection, sore throat, pneumonia, diabetes or high blood pressure, your family physician, internist or pediatrician can manage all these.

You don’t need a $200 appointment with a ENT, Endocrinologist or Heart Specialist to treat these conditions. However, this is where healthcare is headed… It will cost more money and you will have less access to doctors as the number of primary care doctors is dwindling as medical students are choosing specialties that will pay more money.

Why is this? Simply, the cost of college and medical school can easily reach $200,000! A doctor going into primary care simply can not afford to practice preventive medicine as the money is mostly made in only treating really sick patients, like specialists do.

An entry level primary physician making $10,000 to 12,000 per month will pay about 3-4k in taxes as they will be in the highest tax bracket, this leaves $6,000 to 8,ooo/month. Student loans of $200,000 will cost about $1300/month for 30 years or $2200/month for 10 years. Malpractice insurance could cost $1,000-$2000/month. This leaves less than $4,000 to pay for a car, home mortgage, food, bills and children tuition savings- all this after 8-12 years of schooling and training after high school. Why children tuition? Because making as much money as a primary doctor will, their kids won’t likely qualify for student loans.

The only way to fix the shortage in primary care physicians is for congress to step in, and offer either tuition repayment for all medical students going into primary care fields or to set up a tax credit for these physicians. Instead, the government is trying to cut Medicare reimbursement by 10%. This will affect all specialties across the board but will like likely have a bigger impact on physicians making less money.

Most primary care physicians are brilliant individuals who choose to go into primary care due to the ability to practice preventive medicine. They truly have their patients best interest in mind and have chosen patient care over money. Some specialists like orthopedics, ophthalmologists, radiologists and cardiologists can make $300,000-$500,000/yr. While their specialties and training is highly valued, would not a primary care doctor preventing a heart attack in the first place be more beneficial than a specialist trying to fix a diseased heart?

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Number of Primary Care Doctors Down- AP

Fewer American doctors are focusing on primary care, but the decline is being covered by physicians from other countries. The General Accountability Office said Tuesday that as of 2006 there were 22,146 American doctors in residency programs in the United States specializing in primary care.

That was down from 23,801 in 1995, the research arm of Congress told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

“It is troubling to me that the number of Americans pursuing a career in primary care has declined,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

Overall growth in the number of primary-care physicians “has been totally due to the number of international medical students training in America,” Sanders said. “We are increasingly dependent on international medical school graduates to meet our needs. Currently, one in four new physicians in the U.S. is an international medical graduate.”

In its report on primary-care providers, GAO said the number of international medical graduates training in primary care had grown from 13,025 in 1995 to 15,565 in 2006.

For specialists, the number of Americans in training went from 45,300 in 1995 to 47,575 in 2006 and over the same period international specialists grew from 11,957 to 12,611, GAO said.

“There are simply not enough primary-care providers now and the situation will become far worse in the future unless we do something,” Sanders said. He urged doubling funds for the National Health Service Corps to $250 million next year.

The service corps offers scholarships to students dedicated to practicing primary care in communities of greatest need. In return for scholarship support, they must agree to practice in communities where need is the greatest.

“Part of the solution lies in making medical, dental and nursing education affordable for all Americans,” Sanders said.