What the Health Care Bills Do (and Don’t Do) for Primary Care
By Jacob Goldstein
Yes, the big health-care bills moving through Congress include a few measures to increase the number of primary-care doctors. No, those measures probably aren’t enough to satisfy the demand for primary-care projected by medical educators and others, Kaiser Health News reports
Medicare payments to primary-care docs would be boosted by 10% under the the House and Senate bills. And about 1,000 residency positions (which are funded through Medicare) would be redistributed to hospitals that commit to creating more primary-care residencies.
But bigger plans to increase the number of primary-care docs aren’t likely to get very far, because they’d be too expensive. For example, the article cites a proposal from Harry Reid to expand the number of Medicare-funded residency slots by 15,000, or about 15%, with an emphasis on training more primary care doctors. But the $10 billion price tag means that’s not likely to be part of the big health-care overhaul.
“I don’t see anything in the legislation that will greatly increase the primary care pipeline,” the primary-care doctor who chairs the Council on Graduate Medical Education, a group that advises Congress, told KHN.
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