<p>After the vote at 1:00 am this morning, do you think the congress will allocate more money to produce more primary care doctors? Also, what is the National Health Service Corps mentioned in the following paragraph?</p>
<p>"Senator Sanders has proposed a comprehensive set of proposals that ... will increase the number of health professionals and community health centers to enable all Americans to receive affordable medical, dental, and behavioral health services. This is why the senator has put so much energy into expanding the Federally Qualified Community Health Center program and the National Health Service Corps."</p>
<p>Some CCer recently posted that, in order to produce more primary care doctors, the government will likely help shoulder more education cost (e.g., by forgiving the loan) for the medical school students, like many European countries have been doing for years. And he thinks the pay for doctors will likely be lower in the coming years and more and more students from the working class will pursue the medicine career when the "huge loan" factor is no longer there. (Of course, this assumes that these students are still academically capable, that is, have not been screwed up too badly in their education before college.)</p>
<p>Also, is it possible that, in the near future, more and more non-specialty doctors may be educated by foreign medical schools? This is because, short-term-wise, it is not easy to produce enough doctors in this country and all of a sudden we have 30 millions additional patients. I heard that this is already the case in some emergency rooms.</p>
<p>National Health Service pays some or all of your medical school cost in exchange for your commitment to work for them, in certain locations, after you finish your training. I had friends who worked on reservations.</p>
<p>Colleges00701: Yes. They got rid of the public option, fortunately or unfortunately depending on who we are talking to. Most liberal democrats, e.g. Howard Dean, are not pleased. But I sense that most democrats think this bill is as good as they can have for now so they take it. It is somewhat amusing to me that according to the polls, more than 50 percents of people are against the reform as it is but all democrat senators still vote for it. The harm to their political career (by voting yes on this), if any, may not be great otherwise they would not do it.</p>
<p>Shrinkrap: Thanks for the info. My child may be interested in this info (assuming that he manages to get in somewhere in the end.)</p>
<p>Regarding my last paragraph: I just thought of this: most of the family doctors our family have been seeing in the past 20 years (unless they are very very old) were very likely educated by foreign medical schools and then did residence in US. For the specialty doctors we saw in the past, almost none of them seem to be educated outside of US. I guess the situation may be different if we do not live in a big city.</p>
<p>If the merged bill is signed into law next year, I wonder what its long-term effects on medical school admission/education may be. Will it be easier, harder, or the same, in order to get into a medical school, for example, 10 years from now? Will the medical school education system become more European-like?</p>
<p>I could be wrong here: In Europe, more students seem to be allowed to enter the medical schools almost free of tuition, but the attrition rates at many medical schools are much higher. I also heard that many new immigrants go into this field over there due to their “almost tuition free” policy. (I also heard a rumor that if you are not good enough to get into a medical school here in US, an alternative, “kind of back-door” route is to go to one in countries like Poland, etc. Whether a student graduated from there can get hold of a residency spot is another question.)</p>
<p>Yes… this is a back-door approach many many use. The most common med schools to attend are the Carib ones but, in theory, you could probably go just about anywhere. It’s just that the Caribbean med schools have set up a back-door system for students who weren’t cut out for US med schools but hope for a 2nd chance. They have insane attrition rates and 80% that do graduate won’t get a U.S. residency, but for those that do, it is possible to get into practice here when all is said done if you’re one of the lucky few for which such a backdoor works.</p>
<p>Simply adding more community health centers won’t necessarily solve problems, nor will loan forgiveness alone. Loan forgiveness for primary care docs will probably increase the number of docs going into primary care, but these docs will tend to concentrate in areas where Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement is relatively higher. If the government really wants to cover people in rural or underserved areas, they will also have to increase the reimbursement rates in these areas to more competitive levels in order to attract doctors.</p>
<p>Similarly, making community health centers will not increase the number of doctors (since that depends on number of residency slots, which remain relatively constant), but it might open up opportunities for more mid-levels.</p>
<p>I’m totally new to the health-care reform stuff, but I thought I should learn about this because I’m hoping to become well-aware of current events and I’m premed. So I went to the Economist and picked an article that seemed to deal with this story. This is what I read: [America’s</a> health-care bill: Nearer and nearer | The Economist](<a href=“Nearer and nearer”>Nearer and nearer)</p>
<p>I read this article four times, but I’m so frustrated I can’t understand most things on it, even after consulting dictionaries, wikipedia and general web searches. I feel like an idiot, but I regret I didn’t try hard in high school social studies courses, and I’ve yet to take any social science courses like politics or economics at college.
I’d appreciate it if someone could kindly answer my questions below, based on the article:</p>
<p>-One of the goals of Obama’s health-care reform bill seems to be to reduce the amount of national income spent on healthcare by giving everyone an insurance, but how does this reduce overall cost spent on healthcare?
-What is manager’s amendment?
-What is the difference between subsidy and premium? Between insurance premium and premium?
-Why was 60 votes designated as the number needed to avoid a filibuster?
-What exactly is a “public option”?
-Why can’t the Senate pass any version of a bill that contains a public option?
-How is Obama’s health-care reform bill different from the version passed by the House?
-Is Senate version of bill the same as the version of the House? How do they differ from Obama’s health-care reform bill?
-what exactly are premiums?
-Why do Republicans think that the cost of subsidies is an underestimate and predicted savings won’t materialize?
-What does it mean for the Senate bill to be “paid for” and for it to provide for large charges on the most expensive private insurance policies?
-Why do some studies suggest that private insurance premiums could rise in response to burdens placed on insurers? And why are those burdens placed on insurers?
-“And the two bills are funded in very different ways, one with a tax on the rich, the other with an insurance-policy surcharge.” Of the two bills mentioned, I know one is health-care reform bill, but what is the other one?</p>
<p>todpose, I guess what you are lacking, if any, is the lack of real-life experiences that most older adults have had. For example, they need to pay health insurance premium, auto-insurance premium, etc., on a regular basis (or for the health insurance premium, have it automatically deducted from their paycheck.) In other words, it is just because you are young, not because you are not smart. You will know most of these terms/concepts when you have the responsibility of doing this for your family. I think you really do not need more knowledge in political or social sciences before you can understand these terms.</p>
<p>Thanks for providing the link to that article. I think it is a very good summary.</p>
<p>My concern right now is, how am I supposed to use the Economist to improve my reading skills for the MCAT, as some of the experienced people like bluedevilmike and norcalguy recommended, if I have this much difficulty with many of its articles (especially with the ones that assume such background knowledge on economics and politics)? Should I only read articles that are not too heavy on economics and politics?</p>
But BDM and NCG didn’t seem to suggest doing that extra research on my own, but instead only trying to “understand the enough and be able to infer meaning from the sentences you are able to understand,” as NCG said. The problem is that I lack so much background knowledge on economics and politics that it’s really difficult to do that and I need to do research on my own. But if I do that, then the activity becomes more of a learning of politics/economics instead of improving my reading skills.</p>
<p>^ Just a thought: Is it true that in many humanity or social science classes, the students are often required to read tons of pages? I heard that it is often the case that students may need to read more than one thousand of pages per class. So, if you take a few more of these classes of different varieties, you may read a lot without additional efforts by yourself. I think even many high school students from a relatively competitive high school seem to read a lot in high school (to my standard at least) if they read all the books assigned by their teachers. (Granted, some HS students cheat by depending on Cliff Notes.)</p>
<p>On the other hand, I think it is sometimes not easy for a busy premed to do too much of this. I think my child sometimes does not dare to take too many humanity classes in the same semester, especially in a semester when one or two of his science classes (e.g., cell bio, immuno) requires tons of reading also, to get through its encyclopedia-like textbook.</p>
I’ve yet to take a humanities or social science course in college, but I’ll eventually need to take some because of med school requirement. I agree that those courses may help with obtaining the needed backgrounds on economics/politics, but I’m cautious about taking them because humanities/social science is my weakest area and it’s likely to hurt my GPA. Also, like your child, I take at least 3 time-consuming science courses every semester, so I have little free time during the semester. (I could do the additional research/reading on my own on the Economist article only because I’m on a winter break right now)</p>
<p>I believe that, not long ago, when Obama went to AMA to give their members some talk and these members did not like what they heard (They boo-ed him). I also had the impression that some AMA members seem to dislike the way that some AMA leader represents them. Hopefully, the members of AMA are not as divided as our congressmen.</p>
<p>Now we just need to wait and see what the combined bill will be like early next year.
I suspect it will be closer to the senate bill than the house bill. The latter may be “too generous” (or too “Robin Hood” :)) in the current political climate – of course, this depends on who looks at this, because almost all Republicans likely see these two bills (the Senator one and the House one) as “very bad” bills. The extreme left may not be happy either, as they have lost the “war” on the one they care the most: the public option.</p>
<p>I wonder that, if the combined bill is passed and signed into law next year, will the perception of the medical career of many premeds be changed? I heard that in most developed countries, the doctors work fewer hours (maybe because the “incentive” in terms of financial rewards for working longer hours is not there any more?) and are paid less. Also, the services in general become poorer. In the long run, will the debt for a typical medical school student be made lower by political intervention? I think both the debt/loan issue and the life quality issue are important for some premed and medical school students.</p>