But will the quality of care suffer if nurses provide more primary care?
Whatever method of financing for universal care we adopt, we will need more primary care doctors.
That said, we need more primary care professionals – GPs – to be better informed about community-based support.
A Community Service Society study last year found that 300 more primary care doctors were needed in poor neighborhoods.
The rule still applies to groups of 10 or more primary care doctors and 25 or more specialists.
And federal financing for medical education programs should hinge on their plans to train more primary care doctors and fewer specialists.
Granted, it is harder to ignore the American Association of Medical Colleges' (AAMC's) warning that in 10 years, the US will need 45,000 more primary care physicians (pdf).
Hunt has promised more primary care funding, and Health Education England has been charged with getting many more GPs into the system, but even the minister admits existing plans may be inadequate.
In order to fund more primary care and preventive services, our society could increase the percentage of G.D.P. devoted to health care at the expense of other social goods, such as education and infrastructure.
Until we train more primary care physicians and fewer specialists, and until we pay primary care physicians in a way that allows them to make a reasonable income, we are going to have a system with gross imbalances.
But skeptics say that although many parts of the country do need more primary care, American doctors tend to congregate in affluent, urban and suburban areas that already have a generous supply.
