Anyone else notice how we never seem to talk about thedoctors?

The uninsured, certainly, take up most of the chatter when wediscuss health care reform. They stand to reap the most from thelegislation – at least in the short term.

We also talk about the carriers a lot, who’re left holding amixed bag with a larger risk pool, sure, but they almost certainlyface a costly uptick in utilization rates.

The eager regulators, of course, get plenty of attention sincethey seem to be talking about some new phase of implementationevery week.

And, brokers, whose futures are the cloudiest, and whose fatesremain the most closely tied to our own. We talk about them everyday.

But we rarely discuss the medical professionals themselves. Youknow, the ones who’re actually providing our health care? Well, wemight want to start thinking about them a little bit more, or atleast giving them some love, because they’re disappearing fasterthan daily newspapers.

A new survey of the sawbones themselves shows things could get alot worse. “A Survey of America’s Physicians: Practice Patterns andPerspectives,” conducted by the nonprofit The PhysiciansFoundation, is the largest study of its kind, polling more than13,000 doctors across the country.

I mean, I know it’s only American to be down on your job, buthearing that 84 percent of doctors say their profession is indecline is a sobering statement on an epidemic-scale moraleproblem. Nearly 58 percent of them wouldn’t counsel their kids tofollow them into the profession and more than a third of them wouldpursue a different line of work entirely if they could hit thereset button on their careers. And here I thought journalists werethe only ones who felt that way.

But the worst part is the looming provider drought we’re facing– and that no one is talking about. To wit:

• Doctors are cutting back the number of patients they see everyday by nearly 20 percent.
• Nearly a quarter of their time is spend on paperworkalready.
• More than half of them have cut access to Medicare patientswhile more than a quarter of them have closed their doors to theMedicaid crowd entirely.

And, finally, more than half of the doctors surveyed plan cutback even more.

We go back and forth of so many aspects of health care in thiscountry and we always seem to overlook those on the front lines.And we do so at our own peril.