ECON 545
Keller Graduate School of Management
ECON 545: Microeconomic Analysis
The purpose of this paper to is outline and highlight the demand and supply associated with the need for physicians in today’s marketplace. In a microeconomic analysis, we will dissect the supply of physicians versus the needed demand, the elasticity of needs, total of production pricing, and profit or loss connected with this career choice.
Demand Determinants
The requirements to become a physician can be timely and quite costly. The process of advanced schooling of physicians in the United States can be a rather time extensive proves that involves a four year degree (undergraduate education), medical school (four …show more content…
Increased life expectancy and population expansion are anticipated to account for over 80% of the adjustment in need between the years 2010 and 2020.
The remainder in the anticipated demand change is due to the assumed enlargement of health insurance with the execution of the Affordable Care Act. This also assumes that states will increase the use of Medicaid.
Founded on today’s designs of health care use, the need for physicians is anticipated to expand more quickly than the supply of physicians can currently support.
The amount of physicians is anticipated to be raised from over 200,000 Full Time Equivalents in 2010 to over 220,000 Full Time Equivalents by 2020, which is over an 8% increase.
The need for physicians is anticipated to grow by over 28,000, from right at 212,000 Full Time Equivalents in 2010 to over 241,000 in 2020, which is a 14% increase.
Without no change in how health care is supplied, the need in the supply of physicians will not be able to meet the demands by 2020, leaving an anticipated shortfall of over 20,400 doctors. Even though this shortfall is not as large as prior studies have found, the shortage of doctors is still quite substantial (Projecting the Supply and Demand for Primary Care Practitioners, …show more content…
This is a lot faster than the average in most other job fields. As discussed earlier, this progress will transpire due to the continued increase of healthcare-related industries. Pay for doctors, specialists and surgeons are in the top pay scale for almost all job fields. In a study by the Medical Group Management Association’s Physician Compensation and Production Survey, the average compensation for doctors in all fields varied with different types of practice or specialty. In 2012, doctors working in the field of primary care averaged an annual compensation of over $220,000 and doctors in medical specialties annual compensation averaged over $395,000 (Bureau of Labor and Statistics,