In an article found in the NY Times, Peter Bach and Robert Kocher give good argument for making medical school free and then charging those that go into specialties. The basic premise is that we will have a shortage of 40,000 primary care physicians by 2020. Supposedly by making medical school free, we will get more interested in primary care to enroll, and by charging those that go to the specialties, we will retain more of the graduates in the primary care fields.
This is probably true, and I have no problem with the concept. What I would like to propose, however is that primary care receive respect. Right now we have no respect. Our colleagues as well as our patients think of us as treating colds or wiping noses and that's all. But when a person has a real medical problem they think they have to see a specialist.As a primary care physician, I am able to treat and manage 90% of what I see. I can manage severe heart disease, rheumatoid conditions, severe COPD, pain conditions and most anything acute that comes through my door. In addition to treating these problems conventionally, I can also help the body heal the diseases through alternatives. But am I respected by my colleagues or my patients? No. Would I be if I was something besides a family physician? Probably.I can also save the government tons of money by my treatments. I've demonstrated that through my cleansing program, which the government used to charge me with fraud. But instead of learning from this and using this knowledge to pass the training on to others, the government would rather shut me down and make the patients travel 4 hours with the Medicaid cab to the next clinic willing to treat them at UVA. Or they make the patient go to a "pain management specialist" which is a doctor that likes to do the big bucks procedures that don't do anything to fix the pain, but costs a lot more to the patient, government or the insurance company.I suggested a plan back in 1997 at a conference in DC concerning the uninsured in America. The conference was run by members of congress. When I proposed my plan, the head of the conference, a senator, laughed and said. "How will the insurance companies make any money?" The plan I suggested was dropped immediately. I recommend it again. For $1200 per year per patient, I can treat any patient with unlimited visits. That would be considerable savings to Medicare or Medicaid. I actually have three different plans, from a healthy patient plan at $360 per year to the unlimited problem plan at $1200. There are probably other doctors in the country that would be willing to be paid on contract like this. Then the patients just need a policy for their prescriptions. With this type of coverage, it behooves the doctor to be cost effective, get the patient healthy and keep them that way. That is the kind of medicine I do. I have taken patients that spent more time in the hospital than out, and through alternatives and cleansing, they didn't go to the hospital for three years.So is providing free medical training going to change the treatment of primary care physicians? Probably not. In fact, if their training is free, they would probably get less respect than we do now. And what we need is RESPECT.
