Paging Congress: Don’t Cut GME Funding

Guest post from Jason Fodeman, MD

This summer new doctors will start their residency training in a host of hospitals across Arizona and across this great nation. These new doctors are entering medicine at a time when uncertainty about the future of medical practice is at an all-time high. Much of this is a result of the Affordable Care Act, yet other uncertainties remain; including ambiguities about the future of the very funding that supports residency training.

As Congress looks to curtail out of control government spending and rising deficits, one expenditure that has repeatedly drawn interest is funding for Graduate Medical Education (GME). The Super Committee, the Simpson-Bowles Commission, and the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission have all paid particular attention to this funding that supports the mandated training doctors must complete at regular intervals in the years after graduation from medical school.  While budgets must be tightened, cuts to GME would endanger patients.