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    AMA: Trump’s $100,000 H-1B Visa Fee Worsens The U.S. Doctor Shortage

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    By Bruce Japsen,Senior Contributor

    Copyright forbes

    AMA: Trump’s $100,000 H-1B Visa Fee Worsens The U.S. Doctor Shortage

    Tired doctor with glasses in hand holding his eyes in clinic. Emotional burnout of medical workers increased workload concept

    The American Medical Association and more than 50 other medical societies Thursday asked the Trump administration to exempt physicians from the new $100,000 H-1B visa application fee.

    The White House this week announced that all new H-1B visa petitions would now carry a $100,000 supplemental fee, which the nation’s largest physician group and 53 other medical societies say should be waved “so that H-1B physicians can continue to be a pipeline that provides health care to U.S. patients,” the groups said in a letter to U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

    Last year alone, 23 percent of licensed physicians in the U.S. were foreign-trained, the AMA said, adding that these H-1B physicians “provide vitally needed health care to U.S. patients, especially in areas of the country with higher rates of poverty and chronic disease.” Such visas are critical to the healthcare industry to recruit international medical graduates and other health professionals trained outside the U.S.

    There’s already a doctor shortage in the U.S. that is projected at up to 86,000 physicians by 2036, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges, which represents teaching hospitals, academic medical centers and medical schools in the U.S.

    “The U.S. health care workforce relies upon physicians from other countries to provide high-quality and accessible patient care,” the AMA and the other doctor groups said in their letter. “Accordingly, we must ensure that the U.S. has a fair and efficient immigration system that strengthens U.S. health care and advances the nation’s health security.”

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    Other signatories on the letter to Noem include: the American Academy of Pediatrics; the American College of Emergency Physicians; the American College of Surgeons; the American Psychiatric Association; the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists American College of Physicians.

    “As you establish standards to define categories of H-1B workers covered by this exception, we urge you to clarify that all physicians, including medical residents, fellows, researchers, and those working in non-clinical settings, are critical to our national interest and exempt from the Proclamation,” the groups said in their letter to Noem.

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