America's Screwed

I am enrolled at Chicago Medical School. It's in glorious North Chicago which is twenty miles from the harrowing Wisconsin border. The first two years at CMS are spent embedded in the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science. But RFUMS is composed of four institutions besides CMS. Most famously, the Scholl College of Podiatric Medicine resides here, named after the man--the podiatrist and legend--who achieved commercial success with his shoe inserts.

During orientation last week, the dean for CMS stood in front of all the first years in all five programs and told us that this was an exciting time to be getting into medicine. Why? There's a shortage of doctors in America. I disagreed with his use of the word "exciting" when "important" seemed more accurate. But no matter how anyone chooses to describe the situation, it's still a problem. I've read about the issue extensively, and the number of doctors America will be missing in the next decade is startling. Even the most modest estimates claim that the American health system will be missing 91,000 doctors by 2025. As I sat in the middle of Rosalind Franklin University's largest auditorium, surrounded by one of the larger medical school classes in America--boasting almost two hundred students--it occurred to me: this country is screwed.

I tried to run the numbers through my head. There aren't thousands of medical schools in America. There are 159. If the average class size is fifty... that's about 3,000 new medical students per year. If they all practice for about forty years before retiring, then that's about 120,000... but then the population of America will probably keep increasing... and you have to figure that at least half of all physicians will specialize and then America's left with a dearth of primary care again so... Yea, America's screwed.

I don't know who decided to limit the number of medical students--yes, there's a cap on the number of students allowed into medical school each year. And I don't know who decided to make medical school so expensive--I put down $601 for text books this term, wait no... that only covered half of my course expenses. And I don't know why no one seems to be subsidizing primary care physicians even though American legislature has no problem subsidizing corn crops, a process that has negatively impacted the global food market, the obesity rates of Americans (who, as a result, will require even more physicians), and Iowa. But if I could meet the people who decided these arbitrary things, I'd punch them in the face.

I attempted to forget my bitter thoughts on this issue. The dean finished his talk; the entire auditorium erupted in curt applause that ended quickly. Then the dean of the podiatry college was introduced. She was funnier than our dean. But near the end of her time standing in front of anxious first years, she too echoed the first dean. Did you know? There's also a shortage of podiatrists in America.

So at least there's that.



Further Reading:

• The Decline of Primary Care