Medical specialists are paid well for doing "tests and procedures" for each patient.Primary care physicians, on the other hand, receive much lower payment for patient visit and examination.Therefore, to cover their substantial overhead costs, primary care physicians have been forced tro see as many patients per hour as is physically possible.Patients feel slighted, the quality of their care suffers, and their physicians are frustrated by their inability to practice medicine as they believe appropriate.As a result, primary care physicians are leaving practice and few graduating medical students are choosing to enter a field in which insurers pay so poorly.

Since primary care is the basis for maintaining health and early diagnosis of potential health problems, who should be responsible for rectifying this misplaced emphasis of health care?Insurers, medical schools, the government, the AMA, others?