If you recall from my my earlier diary I really think this community needs to engage in everything from boycotts to letter writing campaigns to promote those ideas and policies this country most desperately needs.
There is a huge shortage of primary care providers in the country, and it's getting worse every single year.
If you want healthcare reform to address the critical shortage of primary care providers, please go to this link and support this amendment to the healthcare reform bill...
http://capwiz.com/...
The above amendment was sponsored by Chuck Schumer and already has about a dozen democratic co-sponsors, but it needs more.
This is why Senate Resolution 973 is so important...
"The United States is experiencing a primary care shortage the likes of which we have not seen," stated Jeffrey P. Harris, MD, FACP, president of the American College of Physicians (ACP
Washington has also been training a microscope on the groundbreaking effort in Massachusetts to provide everyone in the state with health insurance: Adding 340,000 people to the rolls of the insured there since 2006 has underscored a shortage of doctors. It takes 63 days on average to get an appointment with a family doctor in Boston, more than twice the wait in Washington, and seven times as long as in Philadelphia and Atlanta, according to a Merritt Hawkins survey.
"If Massachusetts is any guide, with increased access you'd see pent-up demand for health care, and you'd see a lot of frustration with the waiting time to access health care," Phillips said. "It'll swamp the emergency rooms, and those people will be seeking health care in the most expensive settings."
The overall shortage of doctors may grow to 124,400 by 2025, according to a study by the Association of American Medical Colleges. And, the report warns, "if the nation moves rapidly towards universal health coverage" -- which would be likely to increase demand for primary care and reduce immediate access to specialists -- the shortages "may be even more severe."
If the Democrats' universal health care proposals come to fruition, the primary care system will be inundated with at least 45 million newly insured patients. As Massachusetts is finding out in its pioneering attempt to provide universal coverage, our system is not ready for this burden. Universal coverage is useless without primary care access.
Primary care should be the backbone of any health care system. Countries with appropriate primary care resources score highly when it comes to health outcomes and cost. The United States takes the opposite approach
during the past decade, the number of generalist graduates has fallen by 22 percent
The American Academy of Family Physicians predicts that, if current trends continue, the shortage of family doctors will reach 40,000 in a little more than 10 years.
The Census Bureau predicts that the number of adults will increase 21 percent by 2025, and the number of Americans older than 65 will rise by 73 percent.
Typically, older adults seek care from generalists nearly three times each year, double the rate of adults younger than 65. Because of this, Colwill and his researchers expect the number of doctor visits to increase by 29 percent by 2025.
Please go the below link to very quickly send your representative a note supporting this key bill.
http://capwiz.com/...
The link above states...
I am writing to request your co-sponsorship of the "Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act of 2009" (S. 973), which has been introduced by Sens. Bill Nelson (D-FL), Charles Schumer (D-NY), and Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).
Since enactment of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 (BBA), Medicare has severely restricted its level of support for physician training ("graduate medical education," or GME) and the unique clinical environment that teaching hospitals maintain in support of GME. While the BBA’s "cap" on Medicare support for GME may have seemed reasonable policy twelve years ago, today the GME cap clearly contributes to physician shortages across the nation, including an undersupply of primary care and other "generalist" physicians. Under S. 973, America’s health care infrastructure will be strengthened by expanding by 15% the number of Medicare-supported physician training positions. Preference will be given to expanding programs that train primary care physicians and general surgeons, as well as those that train residents in community-based settings. The bill also changes existing Medicare regulations that are troublesome barriers to training residents in non-hospital settings. Finally, this legislation assures that Medicare-supported training slots from closed teaching hospitals are redistributed among other nearby teaching hospitals.
The United States faces a serious shortage of physicians and other health professionals, and the impact of the shortage will be exacerbated by our growing (and aging) population. Health care reform efforts to expand health care coverage and access for more Americans will further increase the demand for physician services. By cosponsoring this bill, you will help increase the nation’s supply of physicians and help address the long-term needs of the communities you represent.
The primary care shortage needs to be addressed yesterday. Not only will the 47 million newly insured stress the system even harder, I have heard there will be some percentage of primary care physicians who will take early retirement if they don't like the form healthcare reform takes. That could be disastrous.
The current co-sponsors of the bill include...
Sens. Charles Schumer (D-NY), Harry Reid (D-NV), and Bill Nelson (D-FL), and Reps. Joe Crowley (D-NY), Kendrick Meek (D-FL), Kathy Castor (D-FL) introduced S. 973/H.R. 2251 on May 5, 2009.
There isn't a bigger proponent of healthcare reform than Chuck Schumer. There is a very good reason why he so strongly wants this amendment.
This amendment is absolutely critical in ensuring that we have enough primary care physicians to actually reduce costs and provide care for everyone.
Unfortunately, the bill is stalling. And it needs grassroots support from you go if HCR is to suceed.
Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act of 2009 - Amends title XVIII (Medicare) of the Social Security Act to require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to: (1) reduce a hospital's otherwise applicable resident limit by the number of positions unused for the five most recent cost reporting periods; and (2) require the distribution of additional resulting residency positions to certain other hospitals.
Requires that all the time spent by a resident in outpatient settings be counted towards the determination of full-time equivalency for the purposes of payments for direct graduate (GME) and indirect (IME) medical education costs, without regard to the setting in which the activities are performed, if the hospital continues to incur the costs of the resident's stipends and fringe benefits during the time the resident spends in that setting.
Sets forth rules for counting resident time for didactic and scholarly activities and other activities.
Directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to establish a process for the redistribution of residency slots after a hospital closes.
We need more primary care providers if Healthcare reform is going to work as intended.
The wait times to see a doctor in IL are upwards of two months already. And I'm sure the problem is just as bad everywhere else
Without primary care providers, patients will not get needed preventative care.
And worse yet, once 47 million people are provided with insurance, wait times to see a doctor will go up, unless the above amendment is included to train more primary care providers.
I honestly believe the primary care physician shortage issue to be the third biggest stumbling block to healthcare refurm, ranked after the republicans, and the insurance lobby/drug lobby bought out blue dogs.
Here are the sources quoted in this diary...
- The Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act
- Science Daily
- Washington Post
- USA Today