Being accepted to medical school was once seen as a ticket to a prosperous and fulfilling career, but today’s students face far less certain futures under Obamacare.
As the Affordable Care Act faces key implementation challenges in the coming year, medical schools have responded to the anticipated spike in demand for health care by adding thousands of slots. For educators and students, big questions loom as to what the medical profession holds for America’s next generation of physicians.
SPECIAL COVERAGE: Health Care Reform
“I would say the biggest problem with the Affordable Care Act for people entering medical school is, ‘What is my life going to be like? What kind of living am I going to make?’” said Dr. Beth Haynes, executive director of the Benjamin Rush Society, a free-market doctors advocacy group. “The whole profession is just a political football right now.”
The most pressing question is whether there will be enough residency slots to accommodate the growing influx of medical students. A medical school graduate is required to complete a hospital residency before practicing medicine, but training positions funded by Medicare have been capped since 1997.
Another 32 million Americans are projected to enter the health care market under “Obamacare,” just as the first wave of baby boomers hits 65, the age at which the demand for health care surges. At the same time, many baby boomer doctors will begin to retire.
The result is predicted to create a gaping national physician shortage. The American Medical Association anticipates a shortfall of 62,900 doctors in 2015, a figure that is expected to double by 2025.
“While medical schools are expanding enrollment to meet future needs, [graduate medical education] positions have lagged far behind,” the AMA said in a statement. “As a result, U.S. medical school graduates will exceed the number of available residency slots by as soon as 2015.”
In debt, out of work
The bottom line: Thousands of newly minted MDs may be unable to find work as doctors while wrestling with enormous student loans. The median debt for medical students in 2012 was $170,000, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.
“We’re looking at the reality of medical students in 2016 graduating and having no residency programs available,” said Christiane Mitchell, AAMC director of federal affairs. “If you can’t guarantee residencies, then our best and brightest may look elsewhere.”
Those who do find residency slots could be practicing medicine in a very different environment from previous generations. Caps on Medicare reimbursements, combined with increases in paperwork, are expected to accelerate the trend of doctors working on salary for large hospitals rather than as independent practitioners.
Jeet Garam, a third-year medical student writing this week on the Forbes.com blog The Apothecary, said the mismatch between medical school graduates and productive residency slots points to a larger failure of the president’s national health care overhaul. The looming bottleneck “should be seen as a cautionary tale about centralizing decision-making in health care,” he wrote.
“I fear that as Obamacare moves more decision-making to the federal level, we will see a similar lag emerge in other areas of our health care system between a need being identified and it being met,” Mr. Garam said.
Still, a poll of 843 medical students shows that most support Obamacare,” even though only 48 percent said they understood the law. Of those who said they understood it, 72 percent said they supported the Affordable Care Act, while 11 percent had no opinion, according to a survey conducted in January 2011 by Dr. Tyler Winkelman, a resident at the University of Minnesota.
At the same time, 69 percent agreed that doctors were obligated as professionals to participate in implementing the law, said the survey, published in the November 2012 issue of JAMA Internal Medicine.
Story Continues ?
View Entire Story © Copyright 2013 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.Independent voices from the TWT Communities
Entertainment News and Reviews from Washington, D.C. and beyond. 
Politics, economics, and business from a real world perspective. 
Television commentary, reviews, news and nonstop DVR catch-up 
Headlines from Associated Press and around the Internet 
0 comments:
Post a Comment