Trying to convince medical students to practice in rural/underserved communities by trying to appeal to altruism is clearly not working when many of them may be half a million dollars in debt. It's such a big problem but it seems like there are no easy solutions in sight. Even debt relief programs are clearly not enough. Or perhaps there just aren't enough doctors to begin with.
That would be if we didn't let them successfully lobby to restrict residencies and therefore doctors. Americans with the skill and will exist but we will shut them out because we want to maintain price floors.
Because rural life is fundamentally economically inefficient, so they can't pay more. Transportation and overhead is too expensive. It only works if its subsidized by altruism of the urban economy, or a huge portion of locals learn the skills for themselves.
there are no easy solutions but there are straight-forward solutions. In the short term, have the state incentivize doctors to move through loan forgiveness programs.
In the middle and long term, incentivize people to move to urban areas, build more housing, and culturally stop glorifying suburban and rural life. (And stop supporting it by subsidizing single home ownership and so forth).
In response to a post about a pandemic where the "approved response" is to self-quarantine, you are suggesting that people should be incentivized to live in high-density areas?
Putting aside the benefits of living in a city for the moment, I have to say that such a response appears to be somewhat tone-deaf.
[shrug]
Anyway, it seems that the State paying off medical student debt in return for a certain amount of service to a particular population (a.k.a. the Joel Fleischmann experience) is an efficient use of tax dollars. I admit to only knowing of one person in this situation, but she enjoyed working in the area where she was assigned so much that after her commitment was fulfilled, she stayed on. And even if she hadn't, the community was still well served for the time she was there.
I don't know how widespread this practice is, though.
We have a serious and growing shortage of primary care physicians, mostly due to insufficient federal funding for residency programs. Every year some students who graduate from medical school are unable to practice because they can't get matched to a residency slot. Ask Congress to increase funding for those programs.
It would also help to expand the ranks of physician assistants and nurse practitioners. It doesn't take a full physician to diagnose a middle ear infection or wrap up a sprained ankle.
Perhaps delegating authority to issue immigrant work visas to counties in such cases. Get skilled staff from overseas. Sure, there are ways it could be done badly and go wrong, but it could be done right.
While in principle that makes sense, I think in reality it wouldn’t work.
First, rural counties are not prepared to run their own immigration systems. That kind of work is centralized for several good reasons.
Second, they’d still have to compete with richer counties, who would also love to reduce their health care costs. The price overall might drop a bit, but ultimately I think more urbanized counties would tend to win out over rural counties in such a system.
We are just getting started in dealing with covid-19 health and economic issues.
There are no quick fixes and we need to hope that almost everyone does the right thing (wearing masks, social distancing, keep shopping at local businesses) because we can’t really get the economy going until almost everyone gets on board.
Here in the Midwest, everything except 1) franchise stores and 2) single-proprietor stores have gone to curbside pickup. They invented a whole pickup process at our grocery store, with shipping containers in the parking lot containing staged carts with numbers, masked-and-gloved young people filling and shuttling carts to the container. They text you when your cart is ready. Drive over and park in a numbered space and reply with your space number. Somebody comes out of the container with your cart and you pop your trunk.
Cars coming and going all day. Works well for everybody (with a car).
And there is the challenge that many of the most vulnerable are even more devastated financially by this situation, they have to keep working, and many low pay (now essential jobs) haven't done a good job on ppe. People in those jobs have less access to good medical care and they have to keep working.
I agree, and the blame falls mostly in the federal government for that. They could have mandated many companies to make PPE starting in February. Getting protective gear to workers should be a high priority.
Just today morning, I saw an article in NYT about how US should not be happy that it's COVID numbers are tapering.
They show the total numbers split between NY city and whole of US, and it clearly shows that apart from NY, Boston and a couple of other cities, there is a rapid growth in cases across the country.
Readit News
https://abcnews.go.com/US/bill-forgive-medical-school-debt-c...
It's called the 'The Student Loan Forgiveness for Frontline Health Workers Act.' Introduced by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday
In the middle and long term, incentivize people to move to urban areas, build more housing, and culturally stop glorifying suburban and rural life. (And stop supporting it by subsidizing single home ownership and so forth).
Putting aside the benefits of living in a city for the moment, I have to say that such a response appears to be somewhat tone-deaf.
[shrug]
Anyway, it seems that the State paying off medical student debt in return for a certain amount of service to a particular population (a.k.a. the Joel Fleischmann experience) is an efficient use of tax dollars. I admit to only knowing of one person in this situation, but she enjoyed working in the area where she was assigned so much that after her commitment was fulfilled, she stayed on. And even if she hadn't, the community was still well served for the time she was there.
I don't know how widespread this practice is, though.
It would also help to expand the ranks of physician assistants and nurse practitioners. It doesn't take a full physician to diagnose a middle ear infection or wrap up a sprained ankle.
First, rural counties are not prepared to run their own immigration systems. That kind of work is centralized for several good reasons.
Second, they’d still have to compete with richer counties, who would also love to reduce their health care costs. The price overall might drop a bit, but ultimately I think more urbanized counties would tend to win out over rural counties in such a system.
There are no quick fixes and we need to hope that almost everyone does the right thing (wearing masks, social distancing, keep shopping at local businesses) because we can’t really get the economy going until almost everyone gets on board.
Our leaders have deemed that even curbside pickup is far too dangerous, so Amazon is the only shop in town.
Cars coming and going all day. Works well for everybody (with a car).
They show the total numbers split between NY city and whole of US, and it clearly shows that apart from NY, Boston and a couple of other cities, there is a rapid growth in cases across the country.
Deleted Comment