Specialize This!

Certainly, we have far too many specialists in the United States.  Although specialists play an important role in treating complex and highly intricate health problems, they often create incoherence and confusion, in an already too complex system.  

Often times we go to our doctors searching for answers to health problems, and lo and behold, we are then referred to a "specialist" who can specifically diagnose the problem.  The referral system creates a multitude of problems including: people losing their interpersonal connections with their physicians, a strain on the already taxed system with limited primary care, costs escalating as people are forced to now see multiple doctors to treat one illness, and competition occurs where doctors must specialize in order to maximize economic benefits (i.e. specialists have the greatest chance of becoming rich).  

Fundamentally, doctors should strive for health, not wealth.  I think doctors would be better served specializing in holistic medicine, taking a more integrative approach to health and medicine. This allow them to treat multiple illnesses and provide more cost effective treatments to complex health problems.  In terms of policy, more monetary incentives for doctors to heal patients (much like France already does) would create a more harmonious system, in which med students would not feel obligated to get their specialization to maximize their future incomes. Rather, doctors could then focus on what they should be doing all along: that is, treating illness and improving the health of their patients.