Overshadowed, Med Schools Face Drastic Reductions
Texas medical schools feel like the scorned children of the state’s education budget. Lost amid the pleas of parents to restore funding for public education, and the demands of college students to preserve financial aid, the state’s health care institutions say few seem to understand the drastic situation they face.
At a time when Texas is grappling with a dire — and growing — physician shortfall, medical schools say they won’t be able to fully fund the roughly 5,600 students currently enrolled, and could be forced to curb new admissions next year.
“We are looking at the full ...
Comments (8)
Jonathan Nelson
The proposed Article III budget not only cuts funds for medical school, but it greatly reduces post-graduate residency training, which will undoubtedly result in fewer available residency positions. Texas already doesn't have enough residency positions to accommodate the number of medical students it produces, meaning we spend $200,000 to educate each medical student, then send a significant percentage of each graduating class out of state, where they are likely to remain after completing residency training. The budget also slashes physician education loan repayment, an important incentive to recruit physicians to care for underserved populations. As the article states, we face a shortage of physicians nationwide, and competition for physician services in coming years will be fierce. We need every tool we can get to produce, retain, and recruit physicians to practice in Texas.
Karen Cummings
The Texas GOP doesn't believe Texans should have health insurance/health care so what make you think they would support increasing the number of doctors in Texas?
Andrew Busey via Texas Tribune on Facebook
They should take the cuts out of law schools and leave the medical schools intact. We need doctors a lot more than we need lawyers.
Rudyg43
This is what you get in a one party state with a murdering career Governor!
Cory McIlwain
whew glad I took a faculty position elsewhere
Patrick Peters, Jr.
There is more about this story than meets the eye. Services provided to patients through the the UT Health Science Center-San Antonio or the UT Medicine Group are provided in an incredibally non-cost-effficient manner! Additionally, the UT Medicine Group is in direct competition with the practicing physicians whose taxes support it. Most of the money budgeted to the Health Science Center is used to expand its academic empire, not educate medical students!
Healthy Texan
I thought people chose to go to med school because they wanted to help people yet here we are having to repay their loans. The physicians and their lobby around the country have wanted to limit the number of graduates to help inflate their income potential. Now they are complaining when the legislature pulls a few funds from their pot?
Perhaps the TMA could stop fighting to limit nurse practitioners and other qualified health providers from providing basic medical care around the state. Instead they fight a turf battle with little regard to all the folks that go to the ER and drive up the costs for the rest of us.
Do no harm is something they don't actually buy into.
Navy One
Its all about money. You would have thought the medical industry would have fought hard against the new health care bill. But no, they wanted a guaranteed pay check. Well, thats not the way the world works. You live by that sword, you die by that sword. If you take on has many customers has possible (even illegal immigrants) in order to show a need for more workers, live with it. Have your customers pay and not the taxpayers.