Happiest on Weekends, Live to 100, and Child Waits 7 Months for a Doctor’s Appointment
You’re happiest on weekends. I hope they didn’t pay very much for this study.
According to a projection of the century-long rise in life expectancy published in The Lancet in October, more than half the children born since 2000 in wealthy countries can expect to celebrate their 100th birthday. [Lancet study here; gated, but with abstract.]
No doctors for severely ill children: Wyoming has not a single physician in 12 of 13 sub-specialties for children’s medicine. Other states also have shortages.
If you ask me the most intriguing question in the “You’re happiest on weekends” study (that remains unanswered) is how the researcher was able to apply for a research grant with a straight face?
I agree with you on the weekend study. But you are probably wrong. They probably spent a lot of money on it.
Doctor shortages are going to become routine under obamaCare.
If what the Lancet says is true that is going to be a disaster for Social Security and Medicare.
I would be shocked if Congress actually increased payments for specialists in the pediatric field. If waiting times are grueling now for parents of sick children, I expect they will only get longer if these new bills pass.
To use the shortages of pediatric specialists in Wyoming to sell ObamaCare is bizarre, to say the least.
Wyoming has a population of roughly 540,000 people. Its biggest cities, Cheyenne and Casper, each have about 55,000 people in them. Cheyenne is less than 50 miles from Ft. Collins Colorado (pop 137,000) and about 100 miles from Denver, Colorado.
Guess where the pediatric specialists are going to be?
Pretty soon they’ll have shortages of general practitioners as well.
If the free market causes physician shortages in certain areas, well then either forget about getting treatment, or in the words of Ronald Regan “vote with your feet”.
That’s what the physicians are doing.
Wyoming had 147 cases of pediatric cancer from 1999-2005. Would you want your child treated by a pediatric oncologist who sees 25 cases a year and is forced to serve in an ObamaCare defined “medically underserved area” or would you prefer to vote with your feet and take your child to a center of excellence in another state?
In a country as thinly populated as the United States, there will be areas that don’t have sufficient population to support certain specialties.
Oh, and the federal government already says that big chunks of the city of Denver are medical shortage areas.