Spread across the United States are about 500,000 doctors, cheeked by jowl, in the big cities and thin on the ground in isolated small towns. In June 1986, the secretary of health and human services, Dr. Otis Bowen, passed on a view of his experts: 5%-15% of America’s 500,000 doctors should be candidates for disciplinary action, many of them because of drug taking or alcoholism. Others give their patients poor care because they are senile, incompetent, guilty of misconduct or out of touch with developments in medicine.
The granting, or withdrawal, of licenses to practice is in the hands of state medical boards, but they are overwhelmed with complaints and lack the money to handle even a fraction of them. Recently, however, things have been changing. In 1985, 406 doctors lost their licenses (compared with 255 in 1984), nearly 500 were placed on probation and nearly 1,000 received reprimands or had their right to practice curtailed. The federal inspector general demanded, and won the right for the states and the federal government, which provide health care for the elderly and for the poor under the Medicare and Medicaid programme, to refuse payment to the doctors considered unsatisfactory.
Yet putting these powers into practice is proving to be far from easy. Of the 35 doctors so far denied reimbursement from Medicare, almost all work in lightly populated rural areas. On March 27th, their indignation and that of their patients were a sympathetic hearing by the Senate Finance Committee. Rural doctors may not be as up to date as those in the big towns, but they are often the only source of medical help for miles around and their patients are loyal to them. Members of the review boards, which are paid by the government, insist, however, that elderly and poor people should not be forced to receive (and the state to pay for) inferior care.
An innovation is on the horizon in Texas, the most under-doctored state in the country (with only one doctor for every 1,100 residents). Lubbock University is setting up a computer network that will enable country doctors to obtain medical expertise and access to medical records in a hurry. The aim is to reduce the isolation of the country doctors and thus, in the long run, to attract more young doctors to rural areas.
1.The main topic of the passage is （ ）.
2.According to the text, disciplinary action should be taken against those who give patients poor care because of the following reasons EXCEPT （ ）.
3.Which of the following is true about the unfit doctors?
4.It can be inferred from the text that in the near future （ ）.
5.The paragraph following the text would probably discuss（ ）.
