At least the government realizes that there aren’t enough primary care physicians in Massachusetts to handle the influx of newly insured.

In response, they recently passed a law to remedy this:

In response, the law directs the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester to increase class size so that it can graduate more primary care doctors, Bigby said. In addition, the law calls for better training of primary care doctors and aids some of them in repaying medical school loans.

Increasing the medical class size will not help. The incentives are so strong favoring specialty care, more medical students will simply mean more specialists.

“Better training” won’t help either. Again, it doesn’t address the financial incentives stacked against primary care.

Addressing medical school debt is the only proposal that makes sense. The effectiveness will solely depend on how much debt will be alleviated if a medical student chooses primary care.