December 7th, 2009

Reports National Public Radio:

As law makers debate health care overhaul, they are also considering ways to increase the number of primary care doctors across the country. If the plan passes, it will cover 30 million additional Americans and some fear there aren’t enough doctors to meet the anticipated need. Host Liane Hansen talks to Dr. Atul Grover, the chief advocacy officer for the Association of American Medical Colleges.

LIANE HANSEN, host:

As health care overhaul legislation advances through the Senate, lawmakers are debating a number of proposals and amendments, including an effort to increase the number of primary care physicians across the country. If the health care bill is approved, more than 30 million Americans would be covered, and some fear there aren’t enough family doctors to meet the anticipated need.

Dr. Atul Grover is the chief advocacy officer for the Association of American Medical Colleges. And he’s in the studio. Welcome to the program.

Dr. ATUL GROVER (Chief Advocacy Officer, Association of American Medical Colleges): Thank you for having me.

HANSEN: Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer of New York reportedly plans to introduce an amendment to the health care bill that would add funding for 2,000 medical residency spots in order to get more primary care physicians into the pipeline. Will that be effective?

Dr. GROVER: I think it’s a good start. The problem is that we’re facing, even without significant expansion in insurance coverage, a shortage of somewhere between 125 and 150,000 physicians by the year 2025. And why that’s important now is because you can’t just pull doctors off the shelf. We’re talking about on average 10 years to train and educate them. So it’s something we need to think about now.

HANSEN: Well, why are some senators opposed to the idea of more of these slots?

Dr. GROVER: Well, I think a lot of it comes down to money. And we know that they’ve had a tough time keeping the total budget for the health care reform package under the limits set by the president of $900 billion. Now, from that standpoint, when we’re talking about an additional 15,000 slots – which is what we’d really like to see come out of legislation – that’d be about an extra billion dollars a year, or 10 or $12 billion over 10 years. That’s a big amount of money.

But if you think about it in the context of what Medicare spends every year – somewhere close to half a trillion dollars on medical care – it doesn’t seem like a lot to spend to insure that there are actually physicians out there, to care for medical beneficiaries and the rest of the American public.

HANSEN: So what will happen if an additional 30 million Americans get added to the health care rolls, if they’re already now are too few primary care doctors?

Dr. GROVER: Well, I think it’s going to be tough for everybody, but particularly for people who are already underserved. And those are people who are living in rural areas or people who are already financially underserved, don’t have insurance. We’re going to get to a lot of them, but not all of them.

Read or listen to the rest of the interview at NPR.