Why We Can't Blame Cuba For Our Doctor Shortages [View all]

[Mika]

Why We Can't Blame Cuba For Our Doctor Shortages

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But before Americans, and especially Floridians, scold Brazil, we should consider our own looming and inexcusable physician shortage. Florida, in fact, might as well be Brazil. When the state legislature approved a medical school at Florida International University in 2006, it pointed out that Miami was then the nation’s second largest metropolitan area without a public medical school. Florida needed to license 2,500 new physicians annually to keep up with demand, yet it graduated only 500 medical students a year.

The situation hasn’t improved much today: 16 Florida counties still have fewer than seven doctors per 10,000 residents compared to 22 per 10,000 for the U.S. as a whole. But don’t think the country isn’t in trouble, either.

According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, the U.S. is staring at a shortage of 100,000 physicians by 2020. The problem will be especially acute in poor rural pockets. Not coincidentally, the Philadelphia Inquirer recently reported that the number of medical scholarships offered by the federal government’s National Health Service Corps has dropped from 6,159 in 1981 to 250 today.

I wouldn’t suggest we alleviate the U.S. shortage by recruiting Cuban doctors (though it’s always amused me how U.S. pols like those in the Cuban-American caucus vilify the quality of Cuban docs who work abroad but then suddenly extol their skills when they defect). But railing at Cuban doctors doesn’t fix our problem, either -- just as recruiting them won’t solve Brazil’s problem.

Brazil has apparently decided that a Cuban doctor out in the Amazon is better than no doctor at all out in the Amazon. But that’s a lame healthcare policy -- and Florida and the U.S. need to be mindful of that too.

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