This fee is a great way to ensure that there's very little medical services available to rural populations and to help kill science in the US among other things.
Doctors, pilots and other genuinely essential professions are well covered by a number of other visa categories, such as EB-2.
I don't think the EB-2 process allows the applicant to stay within the US while waiting for the priority date to become current so staying in the US and working during that 3-12 year period won't work without another visa type.
Part of the shortage is also because very few people can afford to become doctors.
In many cases, the rebalancing that is needed is from subspecialties to community based primary care in rural and other underserved areas. Some new medical schools appeared in the 1970’s to address the need for more family medicine docs. What happened was completely predictable… more subspecialists. Graduates follow the money trail when choosing residencies and fellowships.
Don't post docs usually come over on J-1s (if they aren't using practical training)?
"My rural patients are so much more insufferable than my urban ones"
https://old.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/1nkb8f9/my_rural_...
It seems that the reasons for missing doctors are... complex.
I retired from medicine, having spent my career at a well-known institution in the upper midwest of the U.S. Over the course of my tenure there, I took care of patients from all parts of the world, all walks of life. Some of my most cherished patients hailed from rural farm communities. Whatever that commenter’s issues might be, this doesn’t line up with my experience at all. The work of the physician is to tailor their work to meet the needs of the patient by understanding their needs in ways that may be difficult to discern through ways other than empathic understanding.
Rural hospitals are lucky to have any doctor on staff let alone a cardiologist. They are mostly staffed by nurses for quick patch-up work and life flights to major medical centers.
H1B doesn't solve the problem of poor communities getting poor healthcare. Frankly, it costs too much to become a doctor which limits where doctors can be employed. Plenty would like to work rural, but not with $500,000 in student loans. And no, that's no joke. I have a nephew going to medical school in Idaho and that's what his loans are.
A serious problem should not be treated with a band-aid and if you think a band-aid is ok do not be surprised the problem gets worse.
