Six doctors questioned as terror net widens (Australia)

THE Australian end of the global investigation into Britain's foiled terror attacks has dramatically widened, with counter-terrorism police now questioning six Indian migrant doctors across three states.

Authorities, who are already holding Queensland doctor Mohamed Haneef, yesterday raided the homes and hospital offices of four West Australian doctors. Another NSW doctor was questioned, although he was later released.

Australian Federal Police and West Australian police seized the computers, personal organisers and mobile phones of the four doctors as they pursued possible links with suspects detained over the attempted car-bomb attacks in London and Glasgow.

All of the West Australian doctors are Indian nationals and at least one lived in Britain before moving to Australia.

They now work at Royal Perth Hospital and Kalgoorlie Regional Hospital in the Goldfields, 600km east of Perth.

"It is quite a complex investigation and the links to the UK are becoming more concrete," AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty said yesterday.

While a larger number of people were being interviewed it did not mean they were all suspects, he said.

It also emerged yesterday that two British terror suspects -- the brothers Sabeel Ahmed and Kafeel Ahmed, also known to authorities as Khalid Ahmed -- sought jobs in the Queensland health system as well as in Western Australia's.

Sabeel Ahmed registered his interest through the Queensland Health website on April 5 last year but was told he did not have enough experience nor did he meet the English-language requirements.

On June 30 last year, the department also had contact from Kafeel Ahmed, who is accused of driving the Jeep Cherokee packed with petrol and gas canisters into the Glasgow airport terminal.

Sabeel Ahmed registered his interest through the Queensland Health website on April 5 last year but was told he did not have enough experience nor did he meet the English-language requirements.

The Brits must have low standards to let some of these bozos into their medical system.

From the Chritian Science Monitor (7/5/07) “Over the last three years, the NHS recruited more than 22,000 foreign doctors, including 900 from Iraq”

And Mark Steyn on Hugh Hewitt "In Britain, in 2003, the year before this guy came, 58% of the new doctors registered on Britain’s national health service came from foreign countries"

Britain has to outsource her MD's. The British National Health Service can't find native Brits who want to be doctors. What does that tell you about socialized medicine in general and the NHS in particular?

We are doing so, also.

I went looking around the web for the percentages, and I found that this is so common that the AMA actually has an acronym for them: IMGs (International Medical Graduates).

They have a web page here with these membership statistics for doctors practicing in the United States:

Top 20 countries where IMGs received medical training
The following list ranks the top 20 countries where the largest numbers of U.S. physicians trained. These data do not represent citizenship or ethnic origin; they only represent the location of the medical school where the U.S. practicing physician obtained their medical degree.

India - 24.0% (44,585)
Philippines - 10.6% (19,656)
Mexico - 6.7% (12,448)
Pakistan - 5.7% (10,689)
Dominican Republic - 3.8% (7,147)
Russia - 2.9% (5,343)
Grenada - 2.8% (5,196)
Egypt - 2.6% (4,884)
Italy - 2.5% (4,755)
South Korea - 2.5% (4,676)
China - 2.4% (4,523)
Iran - 2.3% (4,355)
Spain - 2.3% (4,332)
Germany - 2.3% (4,269)
Dominica - 2.1% (4,050)
Syria - 1.8% (3,491)
Israel - 1.6% (3,098)
Colombia 1.6% (3,095)
England- 1.6% (3,071)
Lebanon 1.5% (2,871)

Total IMG population in United States - 23.3% (185,234)

(I am pretty sure that the reason that Grenada and the Dominican Republic show up so high on the list is that both are well-known places for U.S. students to also go to medical school, so I don't think that there are actually 12,000+ native Grenadian and Dominican Republic doctors here in the U.S. I myself don't recognize any of the other countries listed as well-known countries for Americans to study medicine, but it's not something that I keep up with. I am pretty sure that we haven't in the past had large numbers of native-born Americans studying medicine in India or, say, Egypt or South Korea.)

On another AMA webpage about member statistics, I noticed three statistics that stood out to me:

The heaviest concentration of IMGs is in New Jersey (39.6% of doctors); New York (38.6%); Florida (33.6%); and Illinois (32.3%).
Among the top four primary specialties, the IMG population represents 30.8% of total physicians in internal medicine; 29.9% in anesthesiology; 29.8% in psychiatry; and 28.6% in pediatrics.
The total physician population increased by 350,386 between 1970 and 1994 (or 104.9%), while IMGs accounted for over one fourth (27.8%) of this increase by gaining 97,359 physicians.
In this 24-year period, non-IMGs grew by 91.4%, while IMGs increased by 170.2%.

Why don’t US medical schools expand? There are plenty of bright US citizens who want to become doctors but don’t get in since it is highly competitve. The IMG backdoor approach disadvantages willing and able US citizens. It’s a ridiculous system.

Apparently the Clinton administration's nonsensical attempt at "health care reform" discouraged students from going into the medical field. I found a few references to this while searching for the IMG statistics; unfortunately, I cannot find the best one that detailed the whole sorry mess.

However, a bit of searching did find this bit from the ASA:

Where Have All the Anesthesiologists Gone? Analysis of the National Anesthesia Worker Shortage

Gifford Eckhout, M.D.
Armin Schubert, M.D.

Anyone who has tried to recruit a new anesthesiologist lately has experienced part of a nationwide phenomenon: Both physician and nonphysician anesthesia personnel are in short supply. As a result, starting salaries are on the increase, recruiting specialists are working overtime, and department chairs are struggling with recruitment and retention of anesthesia personnel.
How did we get here?
In 1994, ASA commissioned a report by Abt Associates on future employment needs in anesthesiology. The report made several assumptions, which in hindsight were not accurate. This included operating room utilization of 90 percent, no growth in surgical procedures (despite an aging population and surgical advances) and unabated use of physician extenders. Based on different scenarios of physician intensity, Abt predicted an oversupply of anesthesiologists for the foreseeable future. At the same time, the Clinton Administration started discussions of large-scale health reform and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education in 1994 recommended limiting the total number of residents to 110 percent of the previous year's U.S. medical graduates and limiting specialist training to 50 percent of all positions. Medical school deans, seeing the writing on the wall, discouraged graduating students from pursuing specialties such as anesthesiology.

(My emphasis added in the second paragraph.)

I think that searching with the terms "medical schools" and "health care reform" might find better material.

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