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Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., a psychiatrist and Navy veteran, on Thursday introduced legislation designed to give a badly needed boost to the nation’s supply of primary care physicians.
He is calling it the RDOCs Act of 2012, and taking the model of Reserve Officers Training Corps at colleges across the country. Full med school scholarships would be offered to those willing to spend five years in public service after their residency and specialization treatment is done.
McDermott
Of all the
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Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., a psychiatrist and Navy veteran, on Thursday introduced legislation designed to give a badly needed boost to the nation’s supply of primary care physicians.
He is calling it the RDOCs Act of 2012, and taking the model of Reserve Officers Training Corps at colleges across the country. Full med school scholarships would be offered to those willing to spend five years in public service after their residency and specialization treatment is done.
McDermott
Of all the challenges facing our nation’s health care system, perhaps the most neglected is the gaping hope in our work force of primary care physicians,” McDermott said. “One estimate projects a shortage of 45,000 primary care doctors by 2020.
McDermott is a senior member of the tax-writing House Ways & Means Committee. When Democrats held a majority, he co-authored (with Republican Rep. Jerry Weller of Illinois) legislation that enacted a sweeping overhaul of foster care in America.
The fate of RDOCs, in a polarized House, is less certain. The House is spending less than one-third of 2012 in session.
“With the retirement of a generation of physicians, the aging of our population and the coming entry into the system of 30 million newly insured thanks to the Affordable Care Act, we do not have enough primare care doctors to meet the demand,” McDermott added.
McDermott did his own public service doctoring more than a generation ago, serving as a psychiatrist with the U.S. Navy Medical Corps during the Vietnam War. He later served as a psychiatrist with the State Dept. in Africa.
With the RDOCs bill, he is following in the tradition of another Washington lawmaker.
Sen. Warren Magnuson, D-Wash., in the early 1970′s, pushed through legislation creating a National Rural Health Service Corps to support physicians who agreed to practice in sparsely populated corners of America.
The gorgeous, remote Methow Valley got a clinic in Twisp — and a first-rate family doctor — thanks to Maggie’s legislation.
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