Juror#8 Posted May 17, 2012 Author Share Posted May 17, 2012 (edited) J8, as someone who has worked many, many years in emergency rooms, I respectfully disagree with your supposition. People will still head to ER's and Urgent Care centers, just as the ones with PCP's have always done. In fact, I would surmise, since there certainly is no sign in any increase in MD's in the future, the increased number of clients will precipitate the doctor into referring more and more of his patients (who call the office for service) to go directly to the ER. Causing an increase in costs, not lessening. Good points. I'll certainly defer to you on the point about people continuing to frequent ERs and Urgent Care even if they have insurance since you have professional experience there. The point about increased MDs, though, I have to take issue with. To give you some absolutely unneccessary background: There is a great site that I frequent called JDUnderground. It's a forum where a bunch of lawyers and professionals of all types complain about being lawyers, complain that law school misled to them, complain that the legal market is over-saturated with lawyers and incompetent schmucks, lament leaving their previous career, and complain that law schools are debt factories producing more candidates than there are jobs. The site is rife with nihilism and every other post is someone suggesting that another poster should "killself" (THE word on that forum) because that poster hasn't found a job for 10 months. Some classic threads (Rob'sHouse pleeeeeease take notes): http://www.jdunderground.com/all/thread.php?threadId=23185 http://www.jdunderground.com/all/thread.php?threadId=23765 http://www.jdunderground.com/all/thread.php?threadId=25907 http://www.jdunderground.com/all/thread.php?threadId=25556 Anyway - enough with the background - the point is that the site has a good many medical professionals (in discussions with those seeking career changes) who have mentioned on more than one occassion that med school enrollment is up significantly and medical schools have a mandate of sorts to lower admissions qualifications to increase matriculation. This is maily do to the boomer generation that are entering retirement age. A quick search validates this point: http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Daily-Reports/2012/May/04/med-school-survey.aspx http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20111024/NEWS/310249959 Apparently admissions to med schools is at an all time high and more MDs are being pumped out than ever before. This increase in MDs should allow for the accommodation of folks who would now be seeing PCPs as opposed to ER visits and hopefully keep costs down. Edited May 17, 2012 by Juror#8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts