Poor Amreicans suffer because of restrictions on immigrant doctors

[DBoon]

July 21, Associated Press — Shortage of doctors affects rural U.S. A national shortage of
doctors is hitting poor places the hardest, and efforts to bring in foreign physicians to fill the
gap are running into restrictions. Doctors recruited from places such as India, the Philippines
and sub−Saharan Africa to work in underserved areas like the Mississippi Delta and the West
already face an arduous and expensive gauntlet of agencies, professional tests and background
checks to secure work papers and permanent residency. Those restrictions have only tightened
in the years since 9−11, and now many believe the process will become more difficult after the
attempted terrorist bombings in Britain that have been linked to foreign doctors. The
government estimates that more than 35 million Americans live in underserved areas, and it
would take 16,000 doctors to immediately fill that need, according to the American Medical
Association. And the gap is expected to widen dramatically over the next several years,
reaching 24,000 in 2020 by one government estimate. A 2005 study in the journal Health
Affairs said it could hit an astonishing 200,000 by then, based on a rising population and an
aging work force. America's rural and inner−city poor already are suffering the most.
Source: http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Jul21/0,4670,DoctorDeficit, 00.html

Sad on many levels:
- Our healthcare system is so broken that withou cheap immigrant labor, many Americans would not have needed care
- We are *importing* doctors from India and Africa? Didn't we used to *send* doctors to these places?
- Once again homeland security and xenophobia triumph over human needs

[Wiley50]

1. Here in Tn, we are overstocked with doctors from India, Pakastan,some from China and Indonesia,

and a few from the middle east.

Sometimes it's really hard to understand what your doctor is telling you
because of their thick accents, though most speak English well.

Also it's hard to learn and spell some of these 20 letter long Indian names.

[obnoxiousdrunk]

2. Exactly

We need more of those thin sweet accented Caucasians practicing medicine

[PaulaFarrell]

3. Also sad on another level

The importation of third-world medical personnale leaves those countries with an even greater shortage. There are the people who are really under-served.

[Cerridwen]

4. The "shortage" of doctors in the U.S. appears to be a manufactured

shortage...

Contrasting Positions on the Physician Workforce

The commission's recommendation that a number of U.S. medical schools be closed derives from its conclusion that the country is facing a serious oversupply of physicians and that the rate of supply (new physicians entering the workforce) must be severely constrained. The AAMC also believes that the country may well be on the verge of a serious oversupply of physicians and, like the commission, bases its view largely on the research of Weiner and his coworkers. However, unlike the commission, the AAMC does not believe that the results of Weiner's work (or the results of the work of others who have studied the issue) allow a firm conclusion to be reached about the actual magnitude of physician oversupply in the future (i.e., the imbalance between the number of physicians available and the need for physicians at some point in time). The potential magnitude of future physician oversupply is inherently uncertain because all of the assumptions that underlie projections of the future need for physicians are subject to question.

<snip>

In order to decrease the number of physicians entering the workforce, the AAMC believes that the number of graduates of non-U.S. medical schools (IMGs) entering the country's graduate medical education (GME) system should be sharply curtailed. At present, IMGs comprise approximately 20 percent of the physician workforce in the United States. Until recently, IMGs comprised approximately 20 percent of the resident physicians in U.S. GME programs. In recent years, however, the number of IMGs entering the country's GME system has increased greatly. In 1994 and 1995, approximately 45 IMGs entered GME for every 100 U.S. medical school graduates who began residency training. To put this in context, the number of IMGs who entered residency programs in each of the last two years was equivalent to the entire graduating classes of some 56 average-sized U.S. medical schools. Accordingly, the AAMC believes strongly that the highest priority in addressing the impending physician oversupply is to reduce dramatically the number of IMGs entering residency training in this country.

(emphasis added) link to AAMC response to Pew Report. AAMC stands for The Association of American Medical Colleges

I think I've got the Pew Report bookmarked...I'll edit it in when I find it.

Both groups believe there is about to be a "dangerous over-supply" of physicians; they just disagree on how to curtail the "oversupply".

edit to add link to Pew Report which states, in part...

The Commission makes the following recommendations for Medicine:

D1: Decrease the number of graduate medical training positions to the number of U.S. medical school graduates plus 10%.

D2: By 2005 reduce the size of the entering medical school class in the U.S. by 20-25%. This would mean a reduction from the 1995 class of 17,500 to an entering class size of 13,000 to 14,000 for 2005. This reduction should come from closing medical schools, not reducing class size.

D3: Change immigration law to tighten the visa process for international medical graduates, ensuring that they return to their native countries for service upon completion of training.

<snip>

D7: establish an enlarged National Health Service Corps to attract graduate physicians into service roles currently being met by the excessive number of residency positions (emphasis added)

[Cerridwen]

5. Kick - there's important information and evidence of how it's being

"spun" in this thread.