WHO'LL TEACH THE DOCTORS?

Leading physicians are raising alarms that new financial pressures on teaching hospitals may force them to quit training young doctors, potentially devastating the quality and diversity of U.S. medical care down the road. One such hospital in New York City, St. Luke's-Roosevelt, estimates that if planned cuts in Medicare and Medicaid discussed by Speaker Newt Gingrich, New York Governor George Pataki and New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani all go through, the hospital will lose more than $35 million per year and may have to eliminate physician training entirely. "At some point," says TIME health care writer Janice Castro, "these hospitals simply will be unable to train the next generation of physicians. Nobody wants to pay for these costly research centers: not the federal government, and not the privately-run HMOs and insurance companies. This is a drastic way of reducing health costs -- in effect, eliminating specialists."