Primary-care medicine said to be facing a crisis.
The New York Times reports, “There is a crisis in medicine today, and it will not be fixed by any candidate’s proposal to provide health insurance for the 45 million Americans now without it. In fact, an increase in insured Americans could make it worse.” This “crisis is a diminishing supply of primary-care physicians, the doctors on the firing line — family physicians, internists, pediatricians, gerontologists, and others — who practice the art and the science of medicine, and who seek to put patients at least on a par with their pocketbooks.” These physicians “spend far more time talking to patients and helping them avert health crises, or cope with ailments that are chronic and incurable than they spend performing tests and procedures.” In addition, they “ask pertinent questions about health and also about life circumstances,” and they “listen carefully to how patients answer.” But, many primary-care physicians “are burdened with paperwork and hours spent negotiating treatment options with insurers. And the payments they receive for services have not increased as the costs of running a modern medical practice have risen.”
Comment: Finally a major newspaper has seen through the fallacy of the suggested fixes for the health care system. Just pumping more money in without changing the infrastructure will only make matters worse. Not only are PC Physicians burdened by the insurance bureaucracy but they are woefully underrepresented among medical school graduates. The AMA makes much ado about the health care system but will not pressure medical schools to enhance training in primary care, nor Congress to enhance support for primary care because it is a captive of hospital based specialists..
