Yesterday, I went to the drugstore in Temple Texas to pick up a script. Outside was a tent and two young people, a young man and a young lady, pushing for donations to “Doctors Without Borders”. It is an apolitical French organization that provides health care to real third country hell holes where war or rebellion or ethnic cleansing have cause terrible health issues. Actually, they were surprised I knew about it.I offered to give them a small bit of folding cash but they said they couldn’t take it, but I could register on a computer and use a card. I deferred… explaining that I don’t want to get on any more lists of do-gooders looking for handouts. I thanked them for their trying to help but then I left.
My prior substack discussed a bit about how doctors in America have changed. Know that I have many friends and colleagues who were not born in America, and have attended Medical school in other countries. I have sent patients to them and gone to them as a patient because they are superb. However, from a doctor shortage standpoint, do read the quote below. Know that indeed the government (through Medicare) provides hospitals roughly 150,000 dollars per “resident” to pay the salaries of the residents that train in our teaching hospitals - that is true. It is limited to a total of 5 years of payment to train a single person. Surgery residencies are usually five years. That is money well spent IMHO.. however… The residents don’t get a salary of 150,000 per year. They are lucky to get half that. Then after residency they are saddled with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt for college and medical school unless Biden comes through with a loan forgiveness which I think is bad. I worked two or three jobs constantly as I went through college and Medical School and never took a penny of loan. But my point about the residency salary is the great majority of the money the feds give the hospital per resident.. goes into the hospital’s accounts. It is hard to find out how much, and what they do with it but there are some administrative burdens and costs that do need to be paid indeed.. Next time you are in a hospital, look at the nice picture of all the residents in the hospital. Count up the number. Multiply by 150,000 per year and soon it is a number in the big millions. Thank you very much taxpayer. Not many people say anything about these expenditures..or know about them.
Some of the best doctors I know are foreign medical graduates. I have sent them patients and I have gone to them as their patient. But we all need to know the facts on these expenditures.
However. When foreign medical graduates come here and look for a medical residency slot… well.. read the article quote below. Thanks to Immigration Reform newsletter.
Summary
On this week’s episode of Parsing Immigration Policy, Kevin Lynn, Executive Director of Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR), joins us to discuss the displacement of Americans in high-skilled jobs, specifically in the field of medicine. Doctors are required to complete a post-graduate residency program in order to be licensed to practice medicine in the United States. But these taxpayer-funded programs are passing over American physicians who have been educated at U.S. medical schools in favor of foreign doctors who have trained abroad.
America faces a physician shortage, yet this spring 1,431 medical school graduates (7.2% of applicants) failed to match into a residency program at teaching hospitals in the U.S. At the same time, 4,356 foreign–trained doctors – over three times the number of jobless American medical school graduates – attained residency positions, at the cost of $150,000 per year per resident to the taxpayers.
Are American doctors less qualified than those from abroad? Lynn argues that the displacement of U.S. doctors is a product of a greater issue in the American hospital system - profits prioritized over patient health. Hospitals know that doctors from abroad are cheaper and more exploitable.
Kevin Lynn’s project, Doctors Without Jobs, seeks to build awareness of this issue and encourage policy changes that would allow more American doctors to be matched into residency programs.