American Dictionary of Flak
medschool, v.i. (see porkbarrel, v.i.): Possible origins Merced CA, first decade of 21st century. 1. To use a new university campus as an anchor tenant for a real estate boom impacting worst air quality basin in the nation, creating an involuntary laboratory for respiratory disease as a base for medical research in respiratory disease. 2. Promise first-rate medical care and abundant numbers of physicians by promoting a scheme for a medical school in one of the poorest areas in the US. 3. (pol) To distract the attention of popular discontent with the highest mortgage foreclosure rate in the nation by promising universal economic and health benefits of establishing a medical school in the midst of an economic and environmental disaster. 4. (edu) To present a real estate boondoggle pretending to be a university campus as a potential medical school. 5. To create a public health and safety disaster to use as a basis for grant proposals to research its effects. 6. (US Congress) To wrap oneself in Hippocratic robes while doing harm. 7. To bury present problems in future fantasies. 8. (civic) To lie while fomenting a future project to avoid telling the truth about the present. 9. To claim that medical students will come to a university campus unable to recruit faculty and an adequate number of students and, despite an increasingly hostile natural, political and economic environment, doctors will stay in that environment, i.e. to evoke the peculiar mystical tradition of University of California administration that "Proximity is Destiny," when in fact proximity to UC Merced means higher density of traffic, air, water and politics.
Newsletter of Rep. Dennis Cardoza, Shrimp Slayer-Merced
A Medical School at UC Merced
From: Dennis Cardoza (dennis.cardoza@congressnewsletter.net)
Sent: Thu 2/28/08 2:15 PM
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Dear Friends,
The entire Central Valley region suffers from a physician shortage and a lack of adequate healthcare resources. Recent reports tell us that the problem is worse than initially thought and likely to get far worse in the future. The best way to address this healthcare emergency is to promptly establish a medical education program at the University of California – Merced.Though UC Merced is only five years old, it is critical that we begin to establish the medical education program now. The entire state of California is expected to face a shortage of up to 17,000 physicians by 2015, but in the Valley we are already facing a shortage. Valley residents are medically underserved with 87 primary care physicians per 100,000 people versus the statewide rate of 126 primary care physicians per 100,000. The number of medical specialists per capita is even lower when compared with other parts of the state.
These statistics highlight the seriousness of the problem and we are already in the process of building support for a medical education program at UC Merced. The University of California’s Health Sciences Advisory Council has recommended a 34 percent increase in medical student enrollments by 2020 to meet increasing demand for doctors. The Council also recognized that medical education programs need to be developed in the SJ Valley and the Inland Empire, where projected population growth rates are twice that of the rest of the state. There is strong evidence that new physicians choose to settle into full-time practice near where they train, so establishment of a medical school in the Valley would produce benefits for the health of the region.
The UC system understands the challenge of meeting our future healthcare needs and the community is coalescing around the plan to bring a medical school to UC Merced. The medical school will be founded on a community-based distributed model of medical education, utilizing current medical facilities in the Valley, as well as the resources of UC San Francisco and UC Davis. The first two years of medical education will be on the UC Merced campus, and the second two years of medical education will be in a clinical setting, with the first clinical campus slated to be at the UCSF Fresno Medical Education Center. More than twenty of the largest community hospitals and community health centers in the Valley are eager to collaborate with UC Merced to focus teaching and research on the community health needs of the region.
I am urging the UC Board of Regents to approve continued planning, provide a reasonable timeframe for initiation, and appoint a taskforce to devise a financing strategy for the development of the medical school at UC Merced. We must work collaboratively to establish the medical school and to address our region’s looming healthcare crisis.
Sincerely,
Dennis Cardoza
Member of Congress