Why Medical School Should Be Free

[dtotire]

Why Medical School Should Be Free
By PETER B. BACH and ROBERT KOCHER
Published: May 28, 2011


DOCTORS are among the most richly rewarded professionals in the country. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that of the 15 highest-paid professions in the United States, all but two are in medicine or dentistry.

Why, then, are we proposing to make medical school free?

Huge medical school debts — doctors now graduate owing more than $155,000 on average, and 86 percent have some debt — are why so many doctors shun primary care in favor of highly paid specialties, where there are incentives to give expensive treatments and order expensive tests, an important driver of rising health care costs.

Fixing our health care system will be impossible without a larger pool of competent primary care doctors who can make sure specialists work together in the treatment of their patients — not in isolation, as they often do today — and keep track of patients as they move among settings like private residences, hospitals and nursing homes. Moreover, our population is growing and aging; the American Academy of Family Physicians has estimated a shortfall of 40,000 primary care doctors by 2020. Given the years it takes to train a doctor, we need to start now.

Making medical school free would relieve doctors of the burden of student debt and gradually shift the work force away from specialties and toward primary care. It would also attract college graduates who are discouraged from going to medical school by the costly tuition.


more:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/opinion/29bach.html?hp

[chrisa]

1. This will never happen.

Colleges are also becoming increasingly more expensive, so we're going to fall even more behind. Science and Technology is just no longer our thing. Most other countries, including many we call "The Third World," have much smarter citizens on average.

Part of the problem is that we no longer value education. Just become another mindless drone in a cubicle and that's that - no need to know anything.

We need to start thinking less about having Medical Schools here, and more about how we can attract the skilled from other countries to come here.

[GKirk]

2. You can't really make it 'free'...

...someone is going to pay for it. In this scheme it would be the taxpayers.

[Distant Observer]

3. Education should be free, based on social need and personal qualification

Much of Latin America and the Caribbean is now aided by CUBAN health and construction specialists because education in Cuba is free.

[sendero]

4. I couldn't disagree more..

.. what a bunch of whiny assed bullshit.

Specialists should pay double for their education.

[izquierdista]

5. Of the 4 comments above,

Three are clueless and one has the right idea.

[dtotire]

6. You are right.

Tuition would be free only for Primary Care doctors, which would increase their number significantly, and their fees could be reduced. Specialized training would still require tuition.

[Donnachaidh]

7. I'll bet the ones who fight this the hardest are the doctors NOW practicing

Hey -- you're giving their competition an advantage they didn't have. Do you honestly think a doctor with a lucrative practice is going to give up patients?

:rofl:

[patrice]

8. All Education should be free and ACCESSIBLE!, all levels, 24/7!!! We should have Education Malls.

Public + Private, 8a-8p, Mon-Sat, perhaps in all of the abandoned malls and strip shopping i see around us here. Smaller and more specialized classes, but also all of the most general core curricula in a region.

People ALSO need micro-lending to do in home businesses complete with a plan, resources, objectives, and work groups, perhaps County Extension managed home business work-groups, included in our community centers along with real mental health services for everyone who needs them!!!

End the WARS!!!

Solidarity with U.S. Labor!