And believe it or not, I agree with what he says:
What to do? Well, more doctors, for one thing. And more incentives to go into primary care. Primary care shouldn’t pay like a specialty. But it could be attractive because it erases your medical debt (say in return for three years of practicing in an underserved community), you get more control over your hours, and you get to spend real time with patients.
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Sounds good to me. Most loan repayment programs pay about $25K a year for your service. It would take forever to payback private med school loans with that amount of money. Full debt payment for 3 years of service would be great.
But it could be attractive because it erases your medical debt (say in return for three years of practicing in an underserved community), you get more control over your hours, and you get to spend real time with patients.”
1. “Underserved” — determined by whom and by what standard? Oh right — by politicians and bureaucrats and by whatever partisan winds happen to blowing at the moment.
2. And if we can’t steer enough physicians into this utopian “Americorps, M.D.” fantasy — what then?
I remain convinced that the end game for healthcare socialists like Klein is enslaving physicians by imposing mandatory “public service” requirements as a condition for keeping one’s medical license. They just don’t have the intellectual honesty to say as much — yet. So they settle for baby steps like this that would inch us toward that ultimate goal.