Originally posted by polo
Do you think we will ever get to a point in education, including Med School, that nearly anyone will be able to learn certain things if they have the money to do so?
Isn't that what capitalism is all about.
If Med Schools doubled or trippled in size because some President/Congress one day thought we needed more doctors, how would that effect all the doctors out there?
Obviously the pay would decrease if there were more doctors. But wouldn't the price of healthcare also decrease.
Also wouldn't more doctors available equal more lives saved.
So why wouldn't they want more doctors into Med Schools? It doesn't make sense.
I would just like to say that there are many problems with increasing the number of physicians in america.
1) Shortage of teaching faculty
2) Shortage of teaching hospitals
3) More resourches needed at the various medical schools (labs, cadavers, etc.), or more medical schools needed.
4) Shortage of exceptional (neccesarily exceptional) applicants. (Note: medical school rejection letters are not telling us the full truth whe they say,
"we've recieved soo many qualified applicants and there just isn't room for all of you...")
5) Possibly most important.. More physicians does NOT equal lower medical costs for the general public without majorly compromising physician reimbursemet. Who here is willing to fork over eight years of your life and $200,000 in loans to have an average salary for a stressful job. Allow me to propose an explanation for fun:
First remember that the number of patient visits to the doctor's office in America today is not dependent on the number of physicians (for the most part) but the number of people who seek/need treatment (and are able to pay for it). In other words, the demand of doctors' services is relatively stable when compared to other industries.
Given: The 1992 figure for physician supply was 245 doctors per 100,000 people. Say we are looking at a town of 100,000 people.
Hypothetical: 245 doctors see 60 patients per week (764,400 doctor visits per year) and are making an average of $150,000 per year. This comes out to $48.06 net profit per patient visit.
Now increase the number of doctors to 400 in the same population. (This, I admit, is an exageration, historically the number of physicians per capita increased from 151/100,000 in 1970 to 245/100,000 in 1992.) With the 400 figure each doctor would only make $91,842 with the same rates for services. Alternatively, service rates could be increased to $78.47 net profit per visit.
You could make the argument that more people will go to the doctors office now that there are more physicians available. So for the sake of examining that argument, lets say that having more doctors improves the wait time and such so that now 1,000,000 patients go to the doctor's office each year (31% increase). This equals 48 patients per week for physicians to treat. The average physician salary still has dropped to $119,957 per year in spite of a 31% increase in patient traffic. Alternatively the patient fees could be increased to $60.08 net profit per visit.
I'm sure others can think of more problems but this is all I got right now.
With respect to economics and education, this is a really complex issue which I think people are way oversimplifying by saying that it resembles communism or capatalism.
1) As far as I know, no medical school is a hugely profitable bussiness. They make ends meet with grant money, endowment dividends, and public support, all of which are as important as tuition to keep up the institutions that educate us as future caregivers of our nation.
2) cerca 100 years ago, the medical school "bussiness" was essentially unregulated in that anyone who wanted to could go to a medical school. It was then that we realized that there was a surplus of poorly trained physicians. Many medical schools were closed. Accrediting guidlines were instated.
3) As I pretty well explained in 5 from above, physician surplus is a potentially big problem because it can result in the increase of medical costs and the decrease of physician compensation. Careful planning (yes, regulation) is needed to recognize how many and what types of physicians should be trained.