Is There a Doctor in the House?: Market Signals and Tomorrow's Supply of Doctors

ISBN-13: 9780804700320 Publisher: Stanford University Press Publication date: 09/23/2008 Edition description: New Edition Pages: 256 Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d) "Will there be a doctor—a good doctor—when I need one?" This is the bedrock health care concern for Americans, encompassing as it does additional concerns about affordability, accessibility, efficiency, and specialty expertise. Richard M. Scheffler brings an economist's insight to the question, showing how shifts in market power underlie the changes we have seen in the health workforce and how they will affect the future availability of doctors. Predicting the "right" ratio of doctors to population in the future is only a small piece of the puzzle, and one that has been the subject of much forecasting, and little agreement, over the past several decades. In this concise and readable analysis, Scheffler goes beyond the guessing game to demonstrate that today's health care system is the product of financial