It's All About the Benjamins, Part III

I've had this post brewing for a few days, so I'm going to open on a note unrelated to this post. My thoughts and condolences go out to all who have been affected by the tragedy at Virginia Tech. My friends share these feelings and add some interesting commentary about the situation here.

If you want, check out these two articles for what I'm going to be talking about. Otherwise, I'll give a quick summary.

War on Terror
Odds are you've heard what's going on with Bush and the war on terror. That and Bush is wanting $1.6 billion for an imminent shortfall in Iraqi operation funding. In the long run, GW is wanting $100 billion for the Iraqi and Afghani "wars."

Residency Funding
Quick background on residencies. After your four years of med school, you enter a residency program. It's through these programs that graduated med students receive training in their specialties, be it family practice or neurosurgery. Hence, graduate medical education as a synonym for residency. You've pretty much gotta get through residency to be eligible for the board certifying, state licensing, and practicing of your specialty. Relevance? GW is proposing cutting funding Medicaid contributions towards residency training. It's through Medicaid and Medicare that residencies receive most of their funding.

Why does this matter? Well, it costs money to train residents. Without money, this doesn't happen. In light of a looming physician shortage, this would not be good. A couple of solutions are in the works: expanding the number of med schools and increasing class sizes. Shocker, if you increase the number of med students, you've gotta have more residencies available when these same kids graduate in four years. Less money for current residencies, bad. Less money for even more residencies, badder.

Another negative of cutting residency funding is the fact that residents perform a lot of the MD level (and scut) work in academic hospitals. Without residents working their 80+ hour weeks, you've got a pretty significant loss of highly-trained manpower. Also, since residents aren't paid at the level of full attendings or that of mid-level providers (PAs, NPs), these same hospitals are able to have two residents working for the price of one mid-level. Oh yeah, and these two residents can each work over twice the number of hours as midlevels without having to be paid overtime.

So yeah, let's keep waging that "pre-emptive war" so that WMDs which may or may not exist don't get used. Need more money for said operations? Why not. Oh, what? Domestic issues? Yessir, we've got us some of those, one of which includes the medical system. Instead of helping the field out, let's cut money out of it. After all, since our "mission is accomplished" in Iraq, we've gotta make sure things stay that way. I'm not saying that Bush is cutting Medicaid funding in the interests of funding his wars. Hell, I have no idea how that type of money gets distributed and/or reallocated. But the timing of the two statements is pretty convenient.

Here's to hoping there are still enough residency spots for me and my classmates when 2011 rolls around.