There are many reasons small town hospitals across the US are closing. One is the extreme physician shortage that exists in rural America. That's why it's appalling that our immigration policies are driving the 1000s of int'l MDs trained in the US to leave.1
30% of those doctors are from India. Our antiquated green card quotas and absurd, discriminatory per country limits mean those doctors could face 10+ year waits for green cards (possibly much longer). 2
We have some programs to encourage these MDs to stay when their training is finished, but they need reform and the green card bottleneck means many no longer want to bother.There are shortages in many nations so many are opting for elsewhere even though they would prefer the US.3
It's a cop out to say we should have Americans instead. It would take billions of dollars to expand the educational infrastructure to solve the physician shortage and the same people who gripe about immigrants also say no to new taxes. 4
Also, it would take about 15 y years from when we decided to put the resources into solving the shortage before the first extra MDS would enter their post-training jobs. A lot of lives will be lost in the meantime. 5
We have a partial solution readily available. Almost 30% of the doctors training in our teaching hospitals are graduates of foreign med schools. They've mostly graduated near the tops of their classes. Yet we push them out when they are finished bc of dumb immigration policies.6
Things have gotten much worse in this Administration even as the doctor shortage worsens. We can fix this and it won't cost taxpayers anything. There are several immigration bills that would do it. But none ever get considered by the immigration committees in Congress. 7
Incidentally, aside from lives saved, a lot of studies show access to health care promotes economic development in rural communities. So retaining these doctors and using immigration incentives to send them to rural communities is a big win for taxpayers. 8
Let's fix this. End of thread.9
Sorry - Forgot to mention that Medicare pays for most of the training of these doctors. So we've paid for the most important part of their medical education and then we're throwing it away. The purpose of that subsidy is to ensure an adequate supply of doctors for the elderly. 10
