WSJ: How to Fix the Doctor Shortage (Darrel G. Kirch)

More doctors, yay! Some major points from the article:

• The United States will face a shortage of more than 125,000 physicians in the next 15 years
• The government pays for a certain number of residency slots. A cap on the number of slots was implemented in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997
• Demand for physician services will increase an estimated 22% between 2005 and 2020, while the number of primary care physicians will increase by only 18% during this period
• Today, the overall number of physicians in the U.S. is lower than the average per capita number of doctors in other nations such as Sweden, Denmark, Spain and France, and we now "import" some 25% of our physicians from other countries
• While the cost to add new physicians is significant, it is less than 1% of current Medicare expenditures

How to Fix the Doctor Shortage