PrintOctober 24, 2011
The Growth of the Health Sector: Bigger Doesn't Always Mean Smarter
As the jobs data spill into the political pot, job growth in the health sector is portrayed as the pony in the manure pile. In fact, to the contrary, the projected expansion seeks to embrace but another policy corrosive to the quality of American medicine.
To be sure, there is a shortage of physicians relative to population and specific to primary care. Paradoxically, however, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act actually limits the size of medical school classes (back to 1997 numbers) and the amount of federal money allocated for uncompensated care that teaching hospitals have used for medical trainee education.
If the number of doctors will not be increasing, who will be delivering patient care?
"Reform," in this case, means a redefined primary care system with non-physicians displacing the doctors' responsibility for determining diagnosis and treatment. This administration believes that any health professional can provide quality if guided by...(Read Full Article)
