Primary Care vs. Specialist

The rising epidemics of obesity and diabetes, specially in children, is the first and foremost challenge of the current and future practicing physicians.

Unfortunately, our broken health care system has fueled these problems to the extent that preventive measures are needed to be taken as soon as today. One of the significant solutions to the challenge would be to train quality health professionals and primary care doctors.

The problem becomes even more exacerbated by the fact that insurance reimbursements to primary care doctors are on the decline, while most medical students graduate with ~$200,000 in loans. Since primary care is poorly reimbursed, many physicians are shunted into procedure oriented specialties like cardiovascular or GI, etc.  These docs end-up treating the many downstream heath consequences of diseases like obesity and diabetes, but at the expense of losing front-line workers (primary care doctors) that can more effectively prevent the long term consequences.

Ultimately, the combination of problems like obesity and a

failed health insurance system snowball and lead to serious

consequences for providing care.