The new federal health-care law has raised the stakes for hospitals and schools already scrambling to train more doctors.

Experts warn there won’t be enough doctors to treat the millions of people newly insured under the law. At current graduation and training rates, the nation could face a shortage of as many as 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

That shortfall is predicted despite a push by teaching hospitals and medical schools to boost the number of U.S. doctors, which now totals about 954,000.

The greatest demand will be for primary-care physicians. These general practitioners, internists, family physicians and pediatricians will have a larger role under the new law, coordinating care for each patient.

The U.S. has 352,908 primary-care doctors now, and the college association estimates that 45,000 more will be needed by 2020. But the number of medical-school students entering family medicine fell more than a quarter between 2002 and 2007.

A shortage of primary-care and other physicians could mean more-limited access to health care and longer wait times for patients.

U.S. Faces Shortage of Doctors – WSJ.com

I think everyone should call John Spratt’s office and ask what he intends to do about this doctor shortage?  After all, he had to have known about this issue.  I mean, he wouldn’t have voted for a 2,000 page bill without knowing the ramifications of it, right?

Washington Office
1401 Longworth Bldg.
Washington, DC 20515
Tel. 202-225-5501
Fax 202-225-0464

If you have a package of changes that fit under reconciliation that you think will pass both houses — and that’s what House, Senate and White House negotiators were working on in late December and early January before the Massachusetts special election — you take those changes, write ‘em up, hand ‘em to the Budget Committee chair — that’s John Spratt (D-SC-05) — and let him hold onto them for a little while.

Next, you dust off H.R. 3200. Remember that one? Not H.R. 3692. That was the bill the House ended up passing. But H.R. 3200 was actually the omnibus bill dishcharged from the Budget Committee in October, consisting of the three committee bills the House worked out in July, and send that to the floor.

Then Spratt goes to the Rules Committee and says that H.R. 3200 is the reconciliation bill the House was instructed to prepare by the Fiscal Year 2010 budget resolution, S. J. Res. 13, and when it comes to the floor, he’d like to be allowed to offer a manager’s amendment consisting of the text of the changes you handed him before. The Rules Committee says OK, and you’re on your way.

The House begins consideration of H.R. 3200, Spratt offers an amendment in the nature of a substitute that has all the agreed-to changes in it, the House passes it and sends it to the Senate. Then the Senate moves it under their own reconciliation procedures, and either agrees to it in which case it’s done, or amends it and the two houses look to move to a conference on it — though it makes the most sense to try to settle things beforehand so the Senate will be satisfied the first time around, too.

That’s mechanically what it would take to get a reconciliation bill done.

Daily Kos