If current trends continue, Americans will “face a health care workforce that is too small and critically unprepared to meet their health needs,” the Institute of Medicine says this morning. This is due not only to the aging of the Baby Boomers, but also to financial incentives that discourage people from caring for the elderly. Doctors specializing in geriatrics averaged income of $163,000 a year in 2005. That’s less than internists with no specialty training, which means doctors are penalized for pursuing advanced training to treat the elderly, the WSJ notes. And, according to the report, half of those who care directly for the elderly, assisting with tasks of daily living, receive less than $9.56 an hour. “This could be seen as evidence that our society places little value on the expertise needed to care for vulnerable, frail, older Americans,” former Aetna CEO John W. Rowe, the chairman of the committee that wrote the report, told the WSJ. |
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