Jim Choate wrote:
CNN REPORT: U.S. TO PAY HOSPITALS NOT TO TRAIN DOCTORS Doctor graphic August 24, 1997
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In an effort to reduce a glut of physicians in the United States, the federal government will pay training hospitals hundreds of millions of dollars not to train doctors, The Washington Post reported Sunday.
Thus protecting the citizens from the horrible spectre of reasonably priced health care. Sick people around the nation must be applauding this government effort.
Medicare underwrites residency training programs heavily. Taxpayers spend $7 billion a year on the training, with each resident translating into an average subsidy of $100,000 a year.
I don't suppose that simply "dropping" the subsidy would have the same result of reducing the number of doctors, would it? (Hello! Is anybody home...?)
The payments are the government's first effort to constrict the pipeline of people entering the medical profession, and one of the few times the federal government has used subsidies as leverage to shrink a particular work force.
At the same time that the baby boom is turning into a geriatric boom which will increase the need for physicians. Sounds like the makings a future "HEALTH CARE CRISIS!!!!" which the government will have to address with new laws and a dramatic increase in government funding for subsidized residency training. Thank God that the government has had the foresight to increasingly arm a variety of government agencies so that they can step in to halt the old, sick sheeple from rushing the medical centers.
But the agreement drew fire from teaching hospitals in other areas of the country who were cutting their residency rolls voluntarily and absorbing the cost of the lost subsidies without federal assistance.
Oh, you mean like is regularly done in the "real" world? Is it "legal" to do that without government assistance?
Others wondered whether it was necessary. The number of doctors training to become specialists in some fields has declined dramatically despite the subsidy program, the Post article said, due to well-publicized warnings that jobs for specialists were only available in less populated areas.
Oh Horror, Oh Horror! Reasonably priced health care, and physicians forced to endure the indignity of providing medical services to people in areas free of big-city smog. Better to heavily arm the big-city government agents to thwart the threat of all of those country bumpkins getting past the road-block identity checks and attempting to access the dwindling number of big-city physicians. Jim, did you make this post up? Are you a forger/spoofer? This post is so typical of government insanity that it seems like a National Lampoon parody. TruthMonger