USA Today did a story on the 'growing shortage' of doctors in America. The article predicts that with the growing population, there will not be enough trained and skilled doctors in practice to meet the need of the people. Wisconsin sits average on the doctors-per-capita scale with a 2.6.
President of the American Medical Association, John Nelson, speculates that the aging population may put a strain on the doctors in practice. The demand for doctors is increasing, but is there a supply to meet the demand?
Or is it that the doctors are ill distributed? Many doctors prefer to live in cities where there are lucrative, insured patients to tend to. Doctors also gravitate towards the high-paid jobs. There may be a surplus of sports medicine, but no radiologists.
Now, medicine in a very inelastic service. People need doctors, so when the supply of doctors drop, the price rises and stays there until the supply goes back up.
2 comments:
first of all, i'm surprised that there is a shortage of doctors. that's one field that i kind of just assumed there would always be enough people in. money's a good motivator. in which case, as the supply of doctors goes down, the demand will stay the same (inelastic), and the price for doctors will rise. as the price rises, more people will be motivated to become doctors for the sake of the salary. and the market will correct itself.
Interesting...(I have to find a new way of saying that...I think I've written that on every other entry...)
Anyway - there seem to be a lot of factors going along with this, all of which will skew the market one way or another (ooooooh...more EXTERNALITIES!).
The demand for doctors may be relatively inelastic, but I wouldn't say perfectly inelastic (as Domino mentioned the D staying the same) - there are times that you just don't need a doc and/or may choose not to go if you think it might be inconvenient or too expensive with your co-pay, whatever.
I could see it evening out in the future if wages continue to rise, but the issues with insurance and Medicare/Medicaid have really messed with the medical profession - a lot of people have gone into other areas similar but less stressful than doctoring (anesthesiologist...holy cow, did I spell that right?...anyway - nursing, etc)
Good job!
Post a Comment