One of the major challenges of insuring the millions of US Citizens who don’t currently have health coverage will be paying for it, which we discussed earlier this week. Another challenge will be having enough doctors and nurses — not to mention other patient-facing medical professionals — to meet demand. A recent WSJ article on the subject captures the challenge best when it notes that “at current graduation and training rates, the nation could face a shortage of as many as 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges … The greatest demand will be for primary-care physicians. These general practitioners, internists, family physicians and pediatricians will have a larger role under the new law, coordinating care for each patient.”
The logical — if you work in government — solution to the problem is to encourage more people to go into medicine by encouraging larger class sizes and new schools, but I question if this is the right move…
