It is ironic that millions of Americans continue to live without access to health care in a country with an abundance of physicians, said Dr. James Dalen, dean of the UA College of Medicine, during a Senate Committee on Health hearing yesterday.

While Dalen did not offer any solutions to this problem, he said it definitely is not due to a lack of qualified providers, as the United States has 30 percent more physicians than it needs.

Dalen delivered these comments during a 90-minute presentation on the state's medical school.

He discussed how health maintenance organizations are affecting the school's bottom line, along with his recommendation that the federal government stop funding foreign-trained physicians through its Medicare residency program.

The surplus of physicians is not due to too many medical schools, rather it is due to the large number of hospital resident positions, Dalen said. He added that many foreign-trained physicians finish medical school and come to the states to complete residencies. Hospitals receive an average of $70,000 per resident through Medicare, Dalen said, which is used to offset the cost of their medical training and continued education.

He said if Medicare discontinued paying residency fees for foreign-trained physicians, it would save taxpayers $2 billion dollars.

Dalen also added that the UA College of Medicine could not survive without state funding, which provides one-third of its operating budget. The other two-thirds comes from patient visits and research.