The Republican Platform on Health Care – 

Letters to the Editor

By Weekly Readers    Published 05/23/2002

In May 2’s “15 Minutes” column, Robert Nixon summarized a health-care forum in Danbury. The forum discussed Health Care for All, a project of the Connecticut Citizen Action Group, and its goals, such as using the tobacco settlement for extending health care to the quarter of a million state residents without insurance.

If Republicans did not attend the forum, perhaps they were not told. I do not recall seeing a notice about the forum in the  Weekly. Was it there? The Democrats [Connecticut] control both houses of the legislature, and have for years. Why not ask them how shortages or gaps have occurred on their watch? The goal proposing using the tobacco settlement is good, in that Martha Dean, from Hartford, in the race for Attorney General, points out that the tobacco settlement did not close down one single vending machine, not one! Dean notes no money for health care went to the smokers buying cigarettes. Dean notes that deal was a lose/lose situation. Use of tobacco did not stop, even while smokers pay much more. Dean asks where did that money go? The article also notes a “shortage of dentists.” Then it gave a quote that Republicans usually don’t push for health-care programs, and that the forum did not attract any Republican state legislators.

As for shortages of dentists, and other providers, here is a Republican proposal, better than “insurance” and HMOs. Since it costs $100,000 a year to train a physician, dentist, nurse or pharmacist, open 100 new medical (including pharmacy, dental, nursing) schools in Connecticut, each with seats for 100 students, to train 10,000 new health-care providers a year. First year cost would be $1 billion! Add another $300 million for overhead, labs, buildings, supplies, travel, advertising, and you have solved the health-care problem for Connecticut.

Connecticut’s annual budget is $13 billion, so this is one-tenth the proposed budget, and less than the cost of insurance. After the fourth year, the costs would top out about $5.2 billion and 10,000 providers would be graduating every year forever. Once Connecticut had enough health care, we could train the nation’s physicians! This is better than more insurance coverage. Insurance is to get care, and people give care.

I’ve never heard of any insurance company taking a temperature, cleaning a tooth, or delivering a baby. We have more insurance companies in Connecticut than medical, dental, pharmacy and nursing schools combined. Wait, I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t have 100 times as many insurance companies in Connecticut as health schools. Maybe 200 times as many. Unless you have more trained people, more insurance won’t help. Just where are our priorities?

Stamford and Greenwich have about one physician per 250 people. If the 250,000 people mentioned in the article needing help are to get health care, that means Connecticut needs 1,000 more physicians, not counting dentists, nurses, and pharmacists. We better train them now!

As for shortages of dentists, and other providers, here is a Republican proposal, better than “insurance” and HMOs. Since it costs $100,000 a year to train a physician, dentist, nurse or pharmacist, open 100 new medical (including pharmacy, dental, nursing) schools in Connecticut, each with seats for 100 students, to train 10,000 new health-care providers a year. First year cost would be $1 billion! Add another $300 million for overhead, labs, buildings, supplies, travel, advertising, and you have solved the health-care problem for Connecticut.

Connecticut’s annual budget is $13 billion, so this is one-tenth the proposed budget, and less than the cost of insurance. After the fourth year, the costs would top out about $5.2 billion and 10,000 providers would be graduating every year forever. Once Connecticut had enough health care, we could train the nation’s physicians! This is better than more insurance coverage. Insurance is to get care, and people give care.

I’ve never heard of any insurance company taking a temperature, cleaning a tooth, or delivering a baby. We have more insurance companies in Connecticut than medical, dental, pharmacy and nursing schools combined. Wait, I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t have 100 times as many insurance companies in Connecticut as health schools. Maybe 200 times as many. Unless you have more trained people, more insurance won’t help. Just where are our priorities?

Stamford and Greenwich have about one physician per 250 people. If the 250,000 people mentioned in the article needing help are to get health care, that means Connecticut needs 1,000 more physicians, not counting dentists, nurses, and pharmacists. We better train them now!

Republicans push health care.

Adopt a platform to TRIPLE the number of Medical professionals, by opening hundreds of new medical and osteopathic schools.  Set a Goal to have TWO million physicians in the U.S. Why 2 million?   The US has 2 million attorneys, less than one tenth of a percent trained overseas versus  750,000 physicians, with one fourth trained overseas, half of them from India and Pakistan.  Many worry about the medically uninsured.  Few are worried about the legally uninsured. Why? Because if you have a reasonable case, some attorney somewhere will take it on, maybe ten attorneys will do so.     Since World War Two the US has not educated enough physicians (also nurses, therapists, dentists, pharmacists)  to replace those MDs or DOs dying and retiring.   The gap having been filled by importation.   The 10 year cost of training an additional 10,000 more physicians is $126 Billion,  1/15^th the cost of insurance subsidies.  Thereupon, 28,000 a year would be added to the US health care for ever.   The MCAT scores about 45,000 science[i] students a year.  You can’t even sit for the MCAT until after completing  more than a year’s worth of heavy college level science courses (usually stretched out over 3 years).  The MCAT test takers compete for about a third that many medical school seats.   If twice the seats were opened, all seats would be immediately filled.  If three times the seats were opened, all would be immediately filled. If Ten times the seats were opened, applicants from past years would fill them.  There are approximately 250 law schools in America, including correspondence and on line formats.  In two generations, the number of attorneys has increased from one lawyer for 695 Americans in 1951 to one lawyer for 264 Americans in 2000.  If law can, why not medicine?  The Veterans Administration sets the highest standard for quality health care, because it trains a fourth of our physicians, and is by far the largest so to do. Its goal is to have 1 physician per 60 patients, which is the Veterans’ Administration standard.  1 to 60 would  be a goal of 7 million physicians.  It would take about 50 years, but it is doable.   I have a 36 page white paper with more details, costs, means. If you want it, call 203-524-6283, or email FATMRepublican@live.com with School in the subject line.

[i]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_College_Admission_Test

The Physical Sciences section assesses problem-solving ability in general chemistry and physics and the Biological Sciences section evaluates these abilities in the areas of biology and organic chemistry

Disclaimer: The author of each article published on this web site owns his or her own words. The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the various authors and forum participants on this site do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of Utah Standard News or official policies of the USN and may actually reflect positions that USN actively opposes. No claim in public domain or fair use.    © Edmunds Tucker. UTopiAH are trade marks of the author. Utopia was written in 1515 by Sir Thomas More, Chancellor of England.