All the pushing in the world for health-care change in the USA that the Obama administration does isn’t going to change the fact that there is a deficit of doctors in the United States.  This is particularly severe in the area of primary care providers. The target of thirty million additional insured individuals is the taget of the Obama federal government. In spite of the increase of individuals with health care access, there will be no corresponding increase in the number of medical practitioners available to treat them.  In fact, studies establish that there will likely be a reduction primary care doctors available in the near future. One solution that gets around this is to increase the number of doctor visas for foreign doctors.

Medical School
Only a small percentage of the thousands of medical school applicants get into medical school.  This is the first limiting element.  There aren’t enough slots to accommodate all the qualified applicants. Quite a number of years are spent in medical school and this is a huge investment. This is the second point.

Primary care doctors, the doctors needed by most patients, are sorely lacking in numbers not just because of these reasons. For one, being a specialist pays better than being a primary care doctor. Medical school tuition, fees and living expenses pile up and newly graduated doctors regularly have grand college loans to deal with upon commencement.  It is in their fitting interest to go into a specialty that would let them to pay off their loans in the fastest time. Also, primary care doctors get paid the smallest amount for their time with insurance payments being among the very lowest for their services.

Reduced Government Funding
After graduating, all new doctors must serve a residency of at least 3 years. Providing this residency training is limited by the budget cuts that hospitals and medical centers have to deal with in this budgetary environment. Annually, one hundred thousand residency positions are paid for by various government healthcare programs such as the VA, Medicare and Medicaid. This leads to medical practitioners-in-training waiting to fill in slots for residents who have completed their 3 years of residency.

These cost-cutting measures do not end after residency. Medical insurance reimbursements, even in the private sector, have lowered. The excessive paperwork needed to process these claims has frustrated doctors even more. Medical personnel have even been lobbying for healthcare reforms to include an increase in payments.

Personal Choice
Making more salary or spending more quality time at home is where most American families are focused these days. When it comes to medical practitioners, most are opting to spend less time at work and more time on research or with their children.

The medical services available in a particular area are also highly influenced by medical practitioner’s personal decisions. For example, not many medical providers choose to work in rural or poor areas. Most would go to places where most patients are covered for health care. Places that have high malpractice insurance premiums also can also dissuade physicians from practicing there.

Retirement
By 2020, the babyboomer doctors who make up a third of the current number of doctors in America will reach the retiring age. The irony is that these babyboom medical providers will be retiring just as the whole baby boom cohort is also going to be reaching the age (retirement age) when their medical needs increase significantly. All these new retirees will need medical attention since it is undisputable that the older we get the greater our need for medical attention becomes. The proportions will not match and a steady increase in medical practitioners is considered necessary in order to meet the coming demand.

The decline of medical practitioners in America needs to be addressed and several proposals have been made to address this issue. New medical schools are being opened and medical class sizes are being increased.  Clearly, incentives are needed for the creation of more primary care medical providers and this is being considered by lawmen. Yet several critics are asking whether we are too late to stop a shortage, especially since physicians aren’t made overnight.

Despite these issues, there are any number of foreign doctors who are anxious to come to the US where the opportunities both financially and to use the most leading edge medical technology are still the greatest.  An increase in the number of medical visas that come with it the limitations on the specialties and the geographies where the immigrant doctors can practice would do a lot to alleviate these issues.  Experienced lawyers in immigration for doctors can be helpful even in today’s environment.