How embarrassing to continually have elected officials exposed for not knowing the basic structure and duties provisioned in this country's foundation. Not even knowing the first amendment is sad.

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Medical Schools Can't Keep Up As Ranks of Insured Expand, Nation Faces Shortage of 150,000 Doctors in 15 Years By SUZANNE SATALINE And SHIRLEY S. WANG [RESIDENCY] Getty Images First-year resident Dr. Rachel Seay, third from left, circumcises a newborn in George Washington University Hospital's delivery wing on March 12. 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. A shortage of primary-care and other physicians could mean more-limited access to health care and longer wait times for patients. Proponents of the new health-care law say it does attempt to address the physician shortage. The law offers sweeteners to encourage more people to enter medical professions, and a 10% Medicare pay boost for primary-care doctors. Meanwhile, a number of new medical schools have opened around the country recently. As of last October, four new medical schools enrolled a total of about 190 students, and 12 medical schools raised the enrollment of first-year students by a total of 150 slots, according to the AAMC. Some 18,000 students entered U.S. medical schools in the fall of 2009, the AAMC says. But medical colleges and hospitals warn that these efforts will hit a big bottleneck: There is a shortage of medical resident positions. The residency is the minimum three-year period when medical-school graduates train in hospitals and clinics. There are about 110,000 resident positions in the U.S., according to the AAMC. Teaching hospitals rely heavily on Medicare funding to pay for these slots. In 1997, Congress imposed a cap on funding for medical residencies, which hospitals say has increasingly hurt their ability to expand the number of positions. Medicare pays $9.1 billion a year to teaching hospitals, which goes toward resident salaries and direct teaching costs, as well as the higher operating costs associated with teaching hospitals, which tend to see the sickest and most costly patients. Doctors' groups and medical schools had hoped that the new health-care law, passed in March, would increase the number of funded residency slots, but such a provision didn't make it into the final bill. "It will probably take 10 years to even make a dent into the number of doctors that we need out there," said Atul Grover, the AAMC's chief advocacy officer. While doctors trained in other countries could theoretically help the primary-care shortage, they hit the same bottleneck with resident slots, because they must still complete a U.S. residency in order to get a license to practice medicine independently in the U.S. In the 2010 class of residents, some 13% of slots are filled by non-U.S. citizens who completed medical school outside the U.S. One provision in the law attempts to address residencies. Since some residency slots go unfilled each year, the law will pool the funding for unused slots and redistribute it to other institutions, with the majority of these slots going to primary-care or general-surgery residencies. The slot redistribution, in effect, will create additional residencies, because previously unfilled positions will now be used, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. From the Archive Some efforts by educators are focused on boosting the number of primary-care doctors. The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences anticipates the state will need 350 more primary-care doctors in the next five years. So it raised its class size by 24 students last year, beyond the 150 previous annual admissions. In addition, the university opened a satellite medical campus in Fayetteville to give six third-year students additional clinical-training opportunities, said Richard Wheeler, executive associate dean for academic affairs. The school asks students to commit to entering rural medicine, and the school has 73 people in the program. "We've tried to make sure the attitude of students going into primary care has changed," said Dr. Wheeler. "To make sure primary care is a respected specialty to go into." Montefiore Medical Center, the university hospital for Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, has 1,220 residency slots. Since the 1970s, Montefiore has encouraged residents to work a few days a week in community clinics in New York's Bronx borough, where about 64 Montefiore residents a year care for pregnant women, deliver children and provide vaccines. There has been a slight increase in the number of residents who ask to join the program, said Peter Selwyn, chairman of Montefiore's department of family and social medicine. One is Justin Sanders, a 2007 graduate of the University of Vermont College of Medicine who is a second-year resident at Montefiore. In recent weeks, he has been caring for children he helped deliver. He said more doctors are needed in his area, but acknowledged that "primary-care residencies are not in the sexier end. A lot of these [specialty] fields are a lot sexier to students with high debt burdens."

Basic economic theory says that when supply outstrips demand, prices must rise in order to find a new equilibrium/market clearing balance. If you impose ceilings (price controls) you get a supply/demand mismatch that results in a shortage because not enough people are willing to supply a given good or service at an arbitrarily set price.

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Originally posted by Shakka How embarrassing to continually have elected officials exposed for not knowing the basic structure and duties provisioned in this country's foundation. Not even knowing the first amendment is sad.

its about as sad as the fat fuck who has nothing better to do than try and play "gotcha" with elected officials, rather than asking a relevant question (which i presume was the whole point of the forum). this is the kind of shit trancer-x would do; pontificate for its own sake.

i bet this clown thought the recent activist decision by the supreme court re campaign financing was a tremendous win for free speech

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Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN its about as sad as the fat fuck who has nothing better to do than try and play "gotcha" with elected officials, rather than asking a relevant question (which i presume was the whole point of the forum). this is the kind of shit trancer-x would do; pontificate for its own sake. i bet this clown thought the recent activist decision by the supreme court re campaign financing was a tremendous win for free speech

He wanted to show how smart he was and how dumb the politician was. I think they both illustrated the point. Yay. I mean, didja see it? He was actually quoting the Constitution verbatim! From memory!!! Yes, I am totally being sarcastic. The politician is still an idiot.

yeah, he was definitely pretty dumb. A house member I assume? They always seem to be a little less capable than their senator brethren.

Scary buffoonery.

http://biggovernment.com/publius/20...e-up-the-bucks/

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This is what the welfare state looks like. The formerly great state of Illinois, having thoroughly run its budget into the ground, is considering digging an even deeper hole by raising taxes. Exactly the shot in the arm the economy needs! Of course, public sector unions are in full-throttle support of the tax grab. (No recession for those that live of taxpayers.) On Wednesday, a phalanx of public sector employees, including SEIU, Illinois Education Association, Illinois Federation of Teachers, AFSCME, and AFL-CIO, rallied in support of the tax hike in the capital, Springfield. This public school teacher, who was likely given the day off to attend the rally, left no doubt about her reasons for supporting the tax hike. Yes, this woman is responsible for educating some number of your children. Her chant goes to the heart of what’s wrong with our public school system…it is designed for the adults in the system, i.e. teachers and not the children. The task at hand is even bigger than we feared.

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Inquiry Says Health Care Charges Were Proper By ROBERT PEAR WASHINGTON — When major companies declared that a provision of the new health care law would hurt earnings, Democrats were skeptical. But after investigating, House Democrats have concluded that the companies were right to tell investors and the government about the expected adverse effects of the law on their financial results. At issue is a section of the law that eliminates a tax break available to companies that provide drug benefits to retirees as part of their insurance coverage. The tax change, expected to generate $4.5 billion of revenue over the next 10 years, will help offset the cost of providing coverage to the uninsured. Within days after President Obama signed the law on March 23, companies filed reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission, saying the tax change would have a material adverse effect on their earnings. The White House suggested that companies were exaggerating the effects of the tax change. The commerce secretary, Gary F. Locke, said the companies were being “premature and irresponsible” in taking such write-downs. Representative Henry A. Waxman of California and Bart Stupak of Michigan, both Democrats, opened an investigation and demanded that four companies — AT&T, Caterpillar, Deere and Verizon — supply documents analyzing the “impact of health care reform,” together with an explanation of their accounting methods. The documents — hundreds of pages of e-mail messages and financial worksheets — include large amounts of data that substantiate the companies’ concerns. They have reignited a battle over the law in Congress. Representative Joe L. Barton of Texas, the senior Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said, “From a financial standpoint, from a purely economic standpoint, many companies would be better off discontinuing health care as a fringe benefit, paying the penalty and pocketing the savings.” In a memorandum summarizing its investigation, the Democratic staff of the committee said, “The companies acted properly and in accordance with accounting standards in submitting filings to the S.E.C. in March and April.” Moreover, it said, “these one-time charges were required by applicable accounting rules.” The committee staff said this view was confirmed by independent experts at the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the American Academy of Actuaries. Mr. Waxman, the chairman of the committee, and Mr. Stupak canceled a hearing at which they had planned to question executives on the effects of the law. A tabulation by the United States Chamber of Commerce shows that at least 40 companies have taken charges against earnings that total $3.4 billion since the law was signed. “Companies like AT&T, Verizon and a range of stakeholder associations are hopeful that the benefits of the new law will outweigh the costs,” Mr. Waxman and Mr. Stupak said in a memorandum to committee members. “But they cannot quantify the benefits until the law is implemented.” AT&T, which took a $995 million charge to reflect the impact of the health care overhaul, said it would be “evaluating prospective changes to the active and retiree health care benefits offered by the company.” Under another provision, employers may be subject to financial penalties if they do not offer health insurance to employees. Documents provided to Congress by AT&T indicate that its medical costs in 2009 were $4.7 billion, divided about equally between active employees and retirees — far more than it would pay in penalties if it did not provide coverage. Verizon said it was taking a $970 million charge against earnings because of the change in tax treatment of a subsidy it receives for retiree drug coverage. In addition, Verizon said it could be affected by a new tax on high-cost health plans that takes effect in 2018. “Many of the plans that Verizon offers to employees and retirees are projected to have costs above the thresholds in the legislation and will be subject to the 40 percent excise tax,” the company told employees. In a general analysis of the new law, Verizon said, “To avoid additional costs and regulations, employers may consider exiting the employer health market and send employees” to state-run insurance exchanges, where people can buy insurance. A Caterpillar executive made a similar point in an e-mail message to colleagues, saying the tax changes could “drive many employers to just drop coverage for retirees altogether, and let the government foot the whole bill.” Caterpillar, the maker of construction equipment, said Monday that it was taking a $90 million charge to earnings because of taxes resulting from the new health care law. In addition, according to documents provided to Congress, Caterpillar could incur new costs because the law eliminates lifetime limits on coverage, and certain children would be allowed to stay on their parents’ insurance until their 26th birthday.

Eat shit, Waxy.