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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This 4-page paper discusses, from an economic standpoint, the potential impact of the primary care physician shortage. Bibliography lists 3 sources.
Page Count:
4 pages (~225 words per page)
File: AS43_MTpcpimpac.doc
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
of primary care physicians; a shortage that is likely to be exacerbated thanks to the Affordable Care Act of 2010. "The annual number of American medical students who go into
primary care has dropped by more than half since 1997," she writes. "Its hard to get an appointment with the doctors who remain" (Carmichael, 2010).
The reason for the slow decline of this particular specialty, Carmichael points out, is money - specialists, dermatologists and radiologists earn twice as much as PCPs for
a lot less effort (Carmichael, 2010). Given medical students graduate from their education with close to a quarter of a million dollars in debt, "its easy to see why primary
care started hemorrhaging recruits more than a decade ago . . . " Carmichael points out. From an economic standpoint, we can point
to the decline in primary care physicians both through opportunity costs on the physician side, and supply and demand on the patient side. Lets examine each of these.
An opportunity cost is defined as a "cost of an alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue a certain action" (Opportunity cost, 2011).
In other words, because economics is a social science studying decision-making behavior and the allocation of scarce resources, individuals are consistently, in their minds, weighing options to determine what is
going to provide more opportunity at less cost. For example, a medical student who wants to decide on a specialty understands shell
take longer to achieve that specialty, as opposed to leaving school sooner to operate as an internist or primary care physician. But this student also understands that if she sticks
...