Doctors may be exempt from the Trump administration’s new $100,000 fee for high-skilled H-1B visa applications, the White House said Monday, after some of the biggest medical bodies called out the risk to rural America where there’s already a dearth of providers.
For hospitals, the H-1B visa program is crucial to recruiting doctors in remote parts of the country where there are in some cases severe shortages of health care workers.
Shares of HCA Healthcare Inc., a major hospital operator, rose as much as 1.4% as of 11 a.m. New York time. Tenet Healthcare Corp. rose 3%.
Health care employers often sponsor medical residents and other physicians through the H-1B program. American Medical Association President Bobby Mukkamala, a Michigan head and neck surgeon, called international medical graduates “a critical part of our physician workforce,” before the Trump administration said it had a potential exception for doctors and those in training.
“The Proclamation allows for potential exemptions, which can include physicians and medical residents,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in an email to Bloomberg News.
More than 76 million Americans live in places where the government has designated a shortage of primary care doctors, according to federal data compiled by health research group KFF.
Federal data from the US Citizenship and Immigration Service show high-profile health systems including Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital are among the health-care industry’s top sponsors of H-1B visas. Mayo has more than 300 approved visas, according to the data. Paying the fee could add millions to the labor costs at large medical systems.
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