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Originally Posted by Rupert Pupkin
In 10-20 years from now, there is going to be a huge shortage of doctors. There is a large percentage of the population that is moving into their retirement years. Insurance companies have been paying less and less to doctors over the last 15 years. I know doctors who were making $500,000 a year who are now only making $200,000 a year and it's only going to get worse with the ACA. Some people may think that $200,000 a year is a lot of money but it's really not that much if you have a family and live in an expensive area.
If doctors continue to make less and less money, it's going to be hard to convince our brightest young people to go hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt with student loans to go into a field that doesn't even pay that well.
I know a couple of doctors who retired relatively young (around 70 years old) because they were fed up with not only making less and less money but also fed up with having to deal with the bureaucracy.
I think this is going to be a big problem. Not only do I think we're going to end up with a big shortage of doctors but I think the quality of doctors is going to go way downhill.
Here are a couple of articles about the subject:
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/11/...ge-of-doctors/
http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/02/health...ctor-shortage/ |
The shortage of doctors is due to the AMA strictly limiting the number of people who are accepted to medical school. This predates the ACA by many years. Here's an article from 2005 about the upcoming doctor shortage:
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/...shortage_x.htm
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The marketplace doesn't determine how many doctors the nation has, as it does for engineers, pilots and other professions. The number of doctors is a political decision, heavily influenced by doctors themselves.
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As the article states, the prediction was that baby boomer doctors would be retiring within 10 years. If doctors that are 70 are now retiring, as you say in your post, then that's right on schedule, as they are the last of the pre-baby boomer MDs (Baby Boom years began in 1946)
There are many, many talented men and women who would love to go into the medical profession, but the AMA has huge influence in keeping them out, plus a lot of the cost of training residents is subsidized by the government, which has put caps on how much they pay (yes, those doctors whining about their med school debts are still subsidized by the government).
That said if these docs you know are retiring because they're mad they aren't making as much money as before, good. I'd hate to be a patient to a doctor who is in it only for the money.
Seriously, read the article. It's very informative (even if it is from USA Today) and as I said, predates the ACA by five years. The doctor shortage has NOTHING to do with the ACA, and everything to do with the AMA.