Surprise: U.S. Facing Doctor Shortage

Gee, I wonder why? You suppose working for years to get through medical school just to become a slave to the government isn't as appealing as Democrats would have you believe?

The new federal health-care law has raised the stakes for hospitals and schools already scrambling to train more doctors.

Experts warn there won't be enough doctors to treat the millions of people newly insured under the law. 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.

That shortfall is predicted despite a push by teaching hospitals and medical schools to boost the number of U.S. doctors, which now totals about 954,000.

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 U.S. has 352,908 primary-care doctors now, and the college association estimates that 45,000 more will be needed by 2020. But the number of medical-school students entering family medicine fell more than a quarter between 2002 and 2007.

Three weeks into the joyous ObamaCare and his approvals are at their lowest level ever, socialized medicine is as unpopular as ever, and those 400,000 jobs Nancy Pelosi proised would magically appear immediately haven't materialized.

Other than that it's been wildly successful.

Meanwhile, a recall effort is on in Kansas. More on that from Dr. Milton Wolf.

Instead of our elected Representatives in Congress giving us answers, they regurgitated talking points (if they could be bothered to address us at all). Instead of thoughtful, needed health care reform, they arrogantly forced upon us the largest expansion of government power and largest intrusion into our lives that our nation has ever seen.

Our congressmen like to tell us how this plan will cut deficits, lower costs, increase competition and improve quality of health care. We've heard it all before. But what you haven't heard are the specific provisions this plan "provides."

This is a plan that adds 16,000 new tax collectors but not a single new doctor or nurse. In fact, the New England Journal of Medicine published a survey recently that revealed almost half of practicing physicians would seriously consider leaving medicine if the health care overhaul passed into law. But this didn't stop Congress. Your elected officials are just fine imposing a plan on you that will drive more doctors away from Medicare and leave legions of patients stranded without care.

This is a plan that levies new taxes on everything from tanning salons to tampons, due and payable today, if you please. But many of the health care "benefits" will not be available until years from now. If it seems like your elected Congress members don't seem to care, why should they? They exempted themselves from the law.

This is a plan that, hidden deep within its 2,700 pages, is the very rationing of health care that this Congress and, regrettably, this president has claimed is not there.

Recently, Dennis Moore was finally cornered and made the stunning - though not surprising - confession that he had not read the health care bill before voting for it. On March 24, Mr. Moore was asked one of my own questions by Ellen Schenk of News Radio 980 KMBZ if the scheme to financially penalize family doctors for referring patients to specialists was still in the bill. She reminded him that this scheme raises concern for the very health care rationing that he has said is not there.

His answer exposed just how little he actually knew about the bill: "I don't know. And I will find out. But I don't know if that's in there. This is, as you know, a multi-hundred, several hundred pages of bill, but uh, uh, I'll check with Dr. Wolf directly, too, and talk to him and find out what, what, what his concern is because I don't know that."