Economics

Excerpt

This year's talk of health care reform has raised many questions about how to improve access to high-quality care at an affordable cost. As the Clinton administration presents their program for health care reform, one of these questions is, "Who will provide medical care?" Reorganized financing and provision of health care will require an appropriate and perhaps different work force of health professionals than we have today.¹ Whichever scheme is chosen to finance medical care, the physicians who serve the reformed health care system will influence its success.

Recent studies of the physician work force have evoked concern about the public's access to appropriately educated physicians. In addition to concerns about access, there is increasing evidence that redistribution of US physicians toward more generalist fields would help to constrain the increase in health care costs. These observations have led to the conclusion that reform of graduate medical education financing