The New 32 Patients and Doctor's Shortage in the Country

Dr. Jon LaPook in his commentary in “Who Will Take Care of 32 Million New Patients? from The Huffington Post. Dr. Jon LaPook comments about the problem that American will face with the shortage of doctors for the new 32 million new patients . The intended audience is the general public, because this topic affects former patients, future patients, and doctors around the country. The credibility of the author is very reliable because he is a board-certified physician in internal medicine and gastroenterology and an Associate Professor of Medicine at Columbia University in New York, NY. These facts make him knowledgeable on this topic and very credible. I agree with his argument about how we don’t have enough doctors to take care of the new patients.

His commentary talks about the need of more doctors in the United States. He states, “Thirty million new patients will try to find primary care doctors. That’s not going to be so easy because we already face a shortage of primary care doctors.” He argues that patients and doctors are going to struggle with the shortage of doctors. In my opinion the new passed bill of Medical Health Care is very good for the country, but government forgot about the problem of insufficient doctors to take care of the new patients. He shows evidence of the shortage of doctors: ”according to the American Medical Association, there are about 312,000 primary care doctors practicing in the United States. An estimate that another 13,000 will be needed comes from a study done by the Robert Graham Center for Policy Studies in partnership with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. These statistics proves that the Country needs more doctors. The logic of his argument is that “ it takes 5 to 8 years for a first year medical student to be trained as a primary care doctor”, then if we need 13,000 more doctors for the upcoming years, we will not have the 13,000 doctors in less than 8 years. Right now some people have not seen a doctor in years because they don’t have medical insurance. Now with this new law these people might think that that problem would be in the past but reality is that they will be shocked to realize that in the United States there are not enough doctors to take care of them. Also that they might have to wait more time than they expected to see a doctor and be treated. Most people center their attention on the pros and cons of Medical Health Care bill, and forgot about the doctors. Doctors are going to be overloaded with work and this might affect their performance.