Let in More Foreign Doctors to Fix Looming Shortage of Physicians Aggravated by Obamacare

by Hans Bader on August 16, 2013

“Bring on the foreign doctors,” writes Slate’s Brian Palmer: 

If President Obama’s health care reform plan is implemented in its current form, the United States will face an estimated shortfall of 130,000 doctors by 2025. . .There’s a simple solution to this problem: Import more physicians from abroad. And yet, it takes years for foreign trained doctors to earn a U.S. license. . .Even if a doctor has practiced for years in her home country, she must pass the same exams as graduates of American medical schools, then repeat three or more years of residency and fellowship training.

A recent New York Times article explored the bewilderment among some health care policy advocates as to why we’ve been slow to liberalize the importation of doctors from abroad. After all, we’re importing more farmhands and nurses to alleviate our shortages in those fields.

Given everything that the United States is doing to keep foreign doctors away, you’d think there would be some evidence that domestically trained doctors are superior. There is none. . . International graduates now score higher than U.S.-educated doctors on many exams.

The health care sector is not the only thing Obamacare harms. “‘The pain Obamacare inflicts is real and currently measurable,’ say 100 fast-food workers,” who face cuts in their hours due to the Affordable Care Act. The Heritage Foundation says that “Obamacare is projected to increase the cost of premiums in the individual market by $2,100 per family,” “an estimated 7 million people will lose their employer-sponsored health insurance,” and “if you’re young, you will be hit with higher costs from health benefits that you must purchase but may never use.”

In The Wall Street Journal, two doctors argued that Obamacare is “bad for your health,” since it has wiped out “venture capital investment in medical devices,” which will have a “devastating” effect on medical innovation. Obamacare caused layoffs in the medical device industry through what Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) called a “job-killing tax” that will “impair American competitiveness in the medical device field.” In the future, hundreds of thousands will stop working or work less due to perverse Obamacare provisions.

Colleges are slashing employee hours to avoid costly Obamacare mandates. Other employers have stopped hiring because of Obamacare, or have cut full-time workers and replaced them with part-time workers. Unions that once backed Obamacare pleaded for fundamental changes to the 2010 healthcare law, saying that without them, Obamacare will “shatter” employee health benefits, cut employee wages, and “destroy” a “foundation” of America’s middle class...... This Appeared Here.....

My Take - I posted this article in whole for two reasons.  One, because a large part of the author's article is from somone else's article, and two, because I feel this line;   "Unions that once backed Obamacare pleadedfor fundamental changes to the 2010 healthcare law, saying that without them, Obamacare will “shatter” employee health benefits, cut employee wages, and “destroy” a“foundation” of America’s middle class" cannot be repeated often enough.