How Trump's travel ban threatens health care, in 3 charts
In many ways, the health system is already stretched too thin, with scarcely enough people spread evenly across the country to do many difficult jobs. And a letter from the American Medical Association to the Secretary of Homeland Security on an earlier Trump travel ban spelled out this immigration policy could make the situation worse by "creating unintended consequences."
Immigrants make up 22 percent of the health workforce and 30 percent of doctors and surgeons in the US
Walk into any hospital, but especially rural hospitals, in the US, and you’ll notice something: Many of the people taking care of you probably weren’t born here. Health care in this country is strikingly international, with the largest proportion of foreign-born and foreign-trained workers of any US industry.
According to 2015 data from the Migration Policy Institute, the US medical profession is particularly reliant on immigrant doctors. Of all the active physicians and surgeons, fully 30 percent are immigrants.
Foreign-trained doctors make up more than 50 percent of geriatric medicine specialists and nearly 40 percent of internal medicine doctors
When you break it down by medical specialty, foreign-trained doctors do a disproportionate amount of the work in certain areas. They make up more than 50 percent of geriatric medicine doctors, almost half of nephrologists (or kidney doctors), nearly 40 percent of internal medicine doctors, and nearly a quarter of family medicine physicians, according to data from the Association of American Medical Colleges.
Compared with US-trained physicians, foreign doctors are also more likely to practice in areas where there are doctor shortages — in particular, in rural areas. (Many enter the US on visas that allowed them to stay if they work in an underserved area for three years after residency.) They’re also more likely to serve poor patients on Medicaid, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found.
https://www.vox.com/2017/2/1/14470746/trump-travel-ban-health-care-doctors
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