Are You Kidding Me? We Need More Primary Care Physicians

On Monday, March 11, I was eagerly anticipating the release of the administration's fiscal year 2020 budget proposal(www.whitehouse.gov) when an email popped up in my inbox. That email linked me to a commentary article in The American Journal of Medicine titled "More Sub-Subs are Coming!"(www.amjmed.com)

I was intrigued, so I opened the article, which changed the course of my day. This little pearl of protectionism came to us from three subspecialists -- two cardiologists and a pathologist -- who, from what I can tell, spent most of their careers in academia. These three individuals' careers happened to converge when they all worked at a medical school in the Southwestern United States.

The article starts off innocently enough with a nice overview of physician training in the United States dating back to the beginning of the 20th century. It also sketches out the various inflection points where major shifts in physician training occurred.

Then the article took an extremely sharp turn, and so did my attitude.