Letters: Medical brain-drain in the offing

There will be a new major Louisiana brain drain — starting now — if the governor and his administration continue to destroy one of our nation’s greatest traditions in medical education by acutely cutting the beds and budgets of the LSU hospitals without having a clear plan of how the state is going to educate future doctors.

I pray to our God every day that this will stop. I plan to do everything in my power to defeat this initiative. This is poorly thought out and it is being conducted in such a fashion that it reminds me of our banana republic days. I thought those days were over.

I stayed here because they were supposed to be over. Others will not stay here. Louisiana has been a wonderful place to train to be a physician and to practice as a physician. Here doctors care about their patients and the education of future doctors.

Many future doctors from all over the country will be coming to our state in the coming months to interview for residency spots and may find formerly great medical specialty programs to be just mere shadows of their former selves.

They will likely choose to go elsewhere to learn their trade, and one day there will be a dearth of well-trained doctors in this state. Is this the legacy that the Jindal administration is striving to achieve?

David Fargason

medical doctor

Baton Rouge

Comments

1) Comment by bourbon-soda - 07/11/2012

@ healthbudget - That's what I meant (re the governor). But is abysmal management the reason we have an executive branch of government, or is the executive branch of government the reason we have slipshod management?

2) Comment by healthbudget - 07/11/2012

@bourbon-soda: Jindal does not have a prayer at that level @scotB - The Governor chose our current situation by not signing on the ACA. That time where the program is funded by the Feds would have given all of the stakeholders time to transition to a more efficient system. As opposed to the slipshod efforts that are going on now. It is frankly abysmal management - which is the principal reason we have an executive branch of government.

3) Comment by bourbon-soda - 07/11/2012

Price controls lead to shortages and surpluses. Shortage of specialists will be worse than shortage of primary care physicians anyway.

4) Comment by ScotB - 07/11/2012

There is already a lack of primary care physicians. Due to Medicare/Medicaid compensation models, this has become a dire situation. The ACA, or Obamacare if you prefer, will make this even worse. The governor only has so much money to work with. It is a very difficult situation, but most health care experts agree that we ultimately would have to abandon the charity hospital method of delivery over time, in any case. Concierge medicine will likely be the wave of the future for those who can afford it and good health care will be divided between the haves & have nots - much like our school systems. There will be the "free" public system and the "private" system that those who pay taxes for the public system still choose to pay for out of their own pockets.

5) Comment by DMJ - 07/11/2012

By the time another Democrat is elected to clean up Jindal's mess, the Louisiana Republican Party will blame him/her for the sad state of health care and higher education in Louisiana. Mark my words. It's the same, oddly successful strategy Republicans always use: create a problem, blame that problem on the other guy, prevent them from fixing it, then blame them for not fixing it...then get elected. Rinse, repeat....

6) Comment by bourbon-soda - 07/11/2012

If the results are as predicted above and below, they will not add much to a resume for national office.

7) Comment by Bighug - 07/11/2012

I agree with the letter and with Stephen. Unfortunately, if King Jindal were to run for governor of Louisiana again tomorrow, he would be elected.

8) Comment by Stephen - 07/11/2012

I am afraid this is what is being said behind closed doors by young people who were considering studying medicine here or doing resident training here. Louisiana will lose doctors. Plain and simple. It will be a blow to the health care of all--rich and poor. It will hurt our economy on several levels. No one serious will want to stay or move here. Please do not let Jindal do this to us. He is just running for national office and using us as his stepping stone. By the way, he starts running for President tomorrow morning with absolutely no real concern for Louisiana.