I wasn't able to make the forum tonight that Exec Ulman is holding on federal health care policy - per the suggestion of the incoming Obama administration. I would have liked to have gone, but couldn't make it. Can anyone that went send me some notes of what was discussed? Particularly, I'd like to hear if anyone discussed how the Healthy Howard Access Plan hasn't worked well at all and how it should probably be transformed into a debt forgiveness program to encourage general practice doctors in the County.
You can drop me a line here.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
There was a time when, if you wanted to become a physician, the bankrolling required more than the velleity of simply making the making the choice and the financing appears.
ReplyDeleteThen in the 1950’s and 1960’s the (then) HEW came up with what seemed a simple solution to the health care conundrum: financial aid to medical schools. They planned to flood the market with new MD’s and so cause increased competition to lower the cost factor attributable to doctors’ incomes.
In the mid 1970’s I was a dinner guest of a brilliant couple of Washington health apparatchiks. He was (among other things) guiding the nascent EPSDT program. And she (the sister of one of the Brookings Institution’s leading economists) was eventually to become the Director of the National Center for Health Statistics. In short, not only were they broadly wired into the beltway health establishment, they had their hands on the steering wheel.
Another guest that evening was the wife of a health economist who had recently been jilted by her co-researcher husband. And she was getting back at him by blabbing about the results of their latest findings, before they had been published: financial support of medical education was having the opposite effect on health costs than they had anticipated!
Although the money given to Medical Schools had worked to increase the supply of physicians, there hadn’t been the expected depressive influence on doc’s incomes. They had found that wherever there were new MD graduates, they would produce medical care and make a handsome income while doing it. The equation was more docs=more procedures and higher medical costs—not lower fees.
By producing more Docs, Washington had increased the supply of costly medical care providers who continued to command a great return on the investment the government had made in their education.
There was amused consternation around the dinner table. Medical Economics had not responded to the “Law” of supply and demand. “Well, maybe we’ll do better with this new entity, The HMO.”
the blog is really informative and i loike this blog more effective and the helpfull for the medicalo dtudents any way thare is an other blogs that facilitate the medical students for the study. the URL http://www.scramantomedicalschool.com
ReplyDelete