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Cost-Benefit Analysis

Decent Essays

The Affordable Healthcare Act has opened up opportunities for many citizens across the United States. Since the bill passed in 2010, the United States Health Department has recorded “about 16.4 million uninsured people have gained health coverage” (2014). Now that many people have been granted the chance to receive a regular check-up from the doctor’s office or go to the emergency room to receive urgent care, there are not enough primary health care professionals to assist those who are in need. The shortage of health care professionals has become a rising problem in the United States. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) over the next 10 years the United States is expected to have a shortage of primary care doctors …show more content…

As years have passed college has become more and more expensive. Medical school graduates, graduate with over $150,000 in debt, thus having a major influence on the career’s that these students choose to take (Christian, 2011, pg.30). The outrageous debt these doctors take on influence them to specialize in different medical fields that will bring in more money. Lauren Silverman, author of “The Cure for a Doctor Shortage: Primary Care and Teamwork”, states that “last year, across the country, the average specialist earned $284,000. The average primary care doc? $195,000. So, selling recent graduates on family practice isn’t easy” (2016). An easier solution to convincing medical students to take the roll of being a primary care physicians is to raise the amount of money they are reimbursed. Primary care physicians are just as important as a specialist. Without a regular check-up to a primary care physician, there would not be a need for specialist. Primary care physicians are usually the first to find a problem with the patient, “It is folly to think that reading a CT scan takes any more skill than separating out a case of lung cancer from the common cold in the doctor’s office” (Christian, 2011, pg. 31). Although this solution will not fix the problem, it is a start to closing the gap on decreasing the shortage of primary care …show more content…

Many medical centers and doctors’ office have opened positions to nurse practitioners to help fill the shortage. Dr. Thomas Bodenheimer, a professor of family and community medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, quoted that “nurse practitioners could be a huge, huge solution to this problem of primary care shortage” in the article “Bracing for Obamacare: Nurse practitioners fill doc shortage gap” by Jonel Aleccia. Nurse Practitioners, are trained to perform the same task that family doctors learn, but sometimes are limited depending on the state that they live in. Texas and eleven other states have strict limitations on their nurse practitioners. Limitations include, that the practitioner must work under the supervision of a physicians, practitioners can only prescribe under the supervision of a physicians and one physician can only supervise four practitioners at a time. Even though physicians do not have to be physically present the NP must always be in contact with the physician. Because of the limitations that are put on nurse practitioners, those who are very ill must be treated by the doctor. According to Hines, many practitioners feel “broader oversight of their work is necessary to alleviate a state health care shortage that's leaving thousands of people without doctors.” (2013) Legislation in Austin has been

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