Thursday, February 03, 2011

Medical School Debt- Cost of Education Must be Subsidized

Medical students may no longer have the earning potential of the preceding few generations of physician graduates before them. Simply put, the cost of a medical school education may be too high to recoup given the changing landscape of health care. Between decreasing reimbursements, commoditization of physician practices, and increasing overhead, and the cost of debt service, medical students will find themselves struggling to get ahead.
On the medical school side, the costs of providing an education are increasing and schools are finding themselves in budgetary binds with faculty restrictions, layoffs, and salary stabilization.
What's the solution?
If the government wants to dictate to physicians what their reimbursement will be for services provided and simultaneously continually increase the overhead expense of a doctor by regulatory compliance burdens, then the government must subsidize medical school education.
I am all for less big government so the other alternative (which obviously is not happening), would be that government does not dictate fees and reimbursements nor regulatory expense burdens for doctors, natural free market forces do and then in that scenario medical school costs would not be the responsibility of government.

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