Rising H-1B Fees for Foreign-Trained Physicians Endanger US Healthcare
- 7 days ago
- 2 min read
Foreign-trained physicians, who constitute nearly one-quarter of the United States’ medical workforce, are facing unprecedented uncertainty due to skyrocketing H-1B visa fees. The administration recently hiked these fees for highly trained professionals nearly 30-fold, raising the cost from approximately $5,000 to $100,000 per physician sponsored.
This "massive increase" could force many foreign doctors to leave underserved communities. A historian of science and Harvard associate professor, Eram Alam, warned that many hospitals, especially those in rural areas, cannot absorb these additional costs. Immigrant physicians have become the "backbone of American medicine," often filling gaps that American-trained doctors typically avoid, particularly in rural areas and under-resourced urban communities. In some rural hospitals, immigrant physicians may comprise 100 per cent of the medical staff.
Experts emphasize that the U.S. health care system depends heavily on this talent. Research co-authored by Michael Liu, an internal medicine resident, estimated that 11,000 doctors currently hold H-1B visas. High poverty counties and rural communities show a four times higher prevalence of H-1B physicians.
Dr. Julie Gralow, chief medical officer at the American Society of Clinical Oncology, notes that new restrictive policies have damaged the U.S.'s reputation, leading to top international talent no longer being interested in coming to America. She stated, "Up until this year, it was a dream... that you could get a job and you could come to the U.S. And now nobody wants to come". Countries such as China, Denmark, Germany, and Australia are actively capitalizing on this shift by recruiting international medical talent away from the U.S..
The American Medical Association (AMA) has petitioned the administration to exempt physicians from these higher fees, citing their critical role in providing care to millions of Americans.
Alam suggests that instead of relying on importing doctors—which causes the physicians’ home countries, many of whom come from India, Pakistan, and the Philippines, to lose medical talent trained with local taxpayer money—the United States should invest in training and producing enough domestic doctors to share expertise globally. The policies dismantling global leadership roles in medicine and science and narrowing borders are undoing decades of progress that began in 1965 when the U.S. first opened its borders to address a sudden demand for doctors spurred by Medicare and Medicaid.
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Keywords: Foreign-Trained Physicians
Foreign-Trained Physicians
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