“Health care in the United States is like a house riddled with termites. On the outside, everything looks fine: Gleaming hospital towers punctuate the skyline; MRI machines produce stunning images; and surgeons use robots to work miracles. But underneath the surface, the foundation is starting to sag: Tens of millions of people have no health insurance, emergency rooms are overwhelmed by patients who don’t have regular physicians, and the cost of medical care is rising into the stratosphere. One of the reasons for the rot at the core is the impending collapse of primary care, the family doctors and other health-care professionals who are the foundation of the health-care system. Just as your house cannot stand without its supporting beams, neither can the health-care system function without doctors and other clinicians who are experts in primary care. They work to prevent illness before it occurs; manage people with complex chronic diseases; care for pregnant women and their babies; and attend to the mental-health and substance-abuse problems that produce so much illness and social disruption.” (03/29/06)