Ail to the Chief

And you thought that oil, honey bees and dollars in your 401K were the only things likely to be in perniciously short supply in 15 years.

Add doctors and nurses to the list. A recent health care report indicates that the Big Three presidential candidates don't back up their lofty "accessible and affordable health care for all" proposals with the funding and physician/nursing infrastructure needed to support them.

The report, issued earlier this year by the San Diego health care recruiting firm of AMN Healthcare Inc., notes a shortfall of 120,000 nurses in this country-and predicts a deficit of between 350,000 and 1 million by 2020, thanks to aging baby boomers and an aging nurse workforce. It also cites a physician shortage that could reach 85,000 to 200,000 docs by 2020.

Apparently none of the presidential candidates propose an adequate increase in the number of nurses in this country-and they appear to have no plans to grow the number of faculty who will train nurse applicants. And the candidates are similarly bereft of ideas to increase the number of physicians trained in the U.S. According to AMN, only the now-defunct campaign of Sen. Joe Biden had plans for increasing residency programs. (Perhaps the good senator-no stranger to the act of appropriation-will permit one lucky candidate to borrow that particular plank of his platform.)

Now is this any way to care for the nation's 47 million uninsured?

The AMN report concludes by stating how the 2008 campaign could, in theory, be the launching pad for a defining dialogue on health care reform. What we have now, though, is apparently yet another Grand Call to Action that's big on cheap rhetoric and shoddy planning and woefully short on thorough research and realistic expectations.

You can't expect to adequately care for your aging and ailing citizenry that way, any more than you can expect to win a war.