How Government Run Health Care Really Pays Doctors--UK Style

[tcmgpt13]

Do we really want to see this happen in the US? Doctors being paid subsistence salaries and being asked to work hours beyond for no pay? In UK evidently junior doctors are expected to put in 20-30 hours of free care on top of a 56 hour work week. Can you imagine how little they probably care about patients after a few months of that grueling schedule and low pay? Since being a doctor apparently is so low paying I expect that there is an acute shortage of doctors. No doubt foreign doctors, often poorly trained, fill the slots? I would guess that. Perhaps those in UK will fill us in some more on this issue?

If Obamacare passes I expect a large number of doctors to quit practice and look for work in another field. That will make health care very interesting indeed.

Junior doctors' £5,000 allowance is axed ... by expenses-row Minister | Mail Online

Junior doctors' £5,000 allowance is axed ... by expenses-row Minister

By GLEN OWEN
Last updated at 22:29 19 April 2008


Storm: 'Mrs Expenses' Ann Keen is facing public protests by junior doctors after cancelling their free accommodation

A Health Minister at the centre of an outcry over Commons housing allowances has caused a new storm by axeing a similar perk for hard-pressed junior doctors.

Ann Keen, dubbed "Mrs Expenses" after it was revealed she jointly claimed nearly £40,000 in second-home payouts with her MP husband in 2002/03, is facing public protests by medics after cancelling their free accommodation.

The long-standing arrangement, which ends in August, is worth £5,000 a year on top of the junior doctors' £20,000 salary meaning they will effectively see their income cut by 20 per cent at a time when they face record levels of debt.

Junior doctors receive free on-site housing as an acknowledgement of their punishing hours. They are contracted to work 56 hours a week, but regularly put in an extra 20 to 30 for no extra pay.

Mrs Keen, the Minister for Health Services, says planned changes to junior doctors' working patterns mean they will no longer need the perk. But the doctors say they will still be obliged to work long shifts and are expected to announce protest plans at their annual conference on Saturday.

Since 2002, Alan and Ann Keen, who have neighbouring constituencies in West London, have claimed more than £175,000 in allowances for a Covent Garden flat even though their family home is nine miles from Parliament.

Last night, a final-year medical student at Birmingham University ? who begins work as a junior doctor this summer and was advised by his tutors not to allow his name to be published said the decision had caused fury in hospitals.

"Mrs Keen is claiming outrageous accommodation expenses in her private life while taking our homes away from us," he said.

A spokesman for the British Medical Association said doctors were fighting to reverse the move.

"Junior doctors and medical students are angry about the way this was imposed, without consultation or compensation," he said.

"NHS accommodation provided a vital opportunity to save on rent and travel costs ? important for a group whose average student debt level on graduation is close to £22,000 and which is struggling to attract students from low-income backgrounds."

A Department of Health spokesman said: "Changes to working patterns and new rotas making it unnecessary for junior doctors to be 'on call' have allowed the Government to remove the residency requirement.

"We consider it appropriate junior doctors are treated exactly the same as other NHS staff."

Here's another article which shows that governments today apparently do not care for their own populations, at least the ones who pay the taxes. This is about adding tens of thousands of asylum seekers to the NHS roll, entitling them to "free" medical care. If you cannot care for your own population adequately you cannot care for others. Any truly compassionate government would realize this and act accordingly by not allowing this to happen in the first place. No doubt Obamacare plans this in the US, granting health care to every illegal alien it can and at the same time allowing them to vote to keep the system in place which is very comfortable for them while the drones keep working to pay for their care:

Failed asylum seekers to get free care from cash strapped NHS to protect their human rights | Mail Online

[carla]

Tcm,
Thats the plan. They want to destroy health care.
We had the greatest healthcare in the world until 10 years ago.
They are building £10million Health Centers everywhere over here,ready for the collapse of our NHS.
They call them 'Walk-in centers' when they should be called 'Walk-in and wait 10 hours centers'.

[Kritters]

Carla,
What happened 10 years ago? Who was in charge then? ???

[tcmgpt13]

Margaret Thatcher was PM 1979-1990 (Conservative), John Majors 1990-1997 (Conservative), Tony Blair 1997-2007 over to be continued by James Gordon Brown, 2007 to present,(Labor). Labor seems to have been in charge over the last ten years.

This link may be censored--I had to use cache to access it:

https://www.questia-online-library.c...0at%20a%20Cost

"Blair and his Chancellor, Gordon Brown, poured money into the NHS. They also attempted some desultory and ineffective reforms. But they were up against the political reality that the NHS inevitably produces long waiting times for operations and the withholding of expensive drugs--and that these failings are equally inevitably blamed on the government.

Ten years later, spending on the NHS has doubled in real terms. An ambitious program of "targets"--e.g., reductions in waiting times for operations--has been launched. Such targets are a formal acknowledgment of rationing and poor-quality service, but are also frequently not met. Patients are kept waiting for many months for outpatient appointments and in-hospital treatment and, in some cases, denied life-saving drugs on the grounds of expense It is the Labour government that is now blamed for these failings, the Tories who preach their fidelity to the ideal of socialized medicine, and the NHS that soars, fuelled by its own inherent shortcomings.

For the moment, what Digby Anderson calls the "spell" cast by Britain's version of socialized medicine remains politically intact. But it has ceased to work its magic for the benefit of the Left. And its internal contradictions can only get worse.

Coming soon to a district near you."

[pat]

Oh yes they poured money in alright but they also encouraged the NHS to be taken over by the'men in suits'brigade.The money didn't go on employing nurses and cleaners it went on 'men in suits'. Hundreds and hundreds of them.Probably all Common Purpose trained.
As for the doctors, I trained in 1970 earning £7 /week-this was when nurses did the real work - lifting, cleaning bed pans scrubbing urine bottles,washing lockers etc.We were charged for our room in the hospital nurses home and here's the best bit..we HAD to 'live in' we didn't have the option of living out.
Maybe these doctors will have to cut down on their drinking parties a bit to fund their accomodation.
Also this government awarded the GP's over £100,000 /year salary.With BONUSES if they manage to get patients off expensive drugs onto cheaper versions.BONUSES for more vaccinations etc etc and at the same time they cut their working hours so they could play more golf.GP's ceased emergency visits to patients homes putting locums in place from abroad. I saw a french chap at one point who knew nothing about me and prescribed
shampoo for my query scabies (morgs).It was like talking to Charles Aznavour.These foreign doctors were being paid over £1000 per shift.
NOW the government realise what a bollack they dropped and have been telling the GP's to work more hours.As if they would do that.So they have bribed them to open some evenings,and some Saturday mornings.What a mess they have made of the NHS.
A hospital consultant was telling me a few weeks ago they were appalled at whats going on and what this Goverment have done. They load the hospitals with 'targets' to meet and if they fail they fine them.Hospitals are allocated so much money per year to run the place and then they fine them if they don't meet these ridiculous targets so fine money comes out of the budget money.How sensible is that.
Also there is much resentment over the immigrants being given treatment free who have never paid into the system,when the NHS is struggling to treat the indiginous population i.e. the mugs who have paid into it all their working life.
However to answer a comment by lamb...apparently the govt have laid down the golden rule that anyone suffering cancer MUST be seen within 2 weeks.I don't know if that is working throughout the country but certainly here i know people who have been seen in the time limit.

[carla]

Originally Posted by Kritters

Carla,
What happened 10 years ago? Who was in charge then? ???

Common Purpose , Kritts.An EU 'Charity' .

Common Purpose (CP) is a Charity, based in Great Britain, which creates ‘Future Leaders’ of society. CP selects individuals and ‘trains’ them to learn how society works, who 'pulls the levers of power' and how CP ‘graduates’ can use this knowledge to lead 'Outside Authority’. Children, teenagers and adults have their prejudices removed. Graduates are ‘empowered’ to become ‘Leaders’ and work in ‘partnership’ with other CP graduates. CP claims to have trained some 30,000 adult graduates in UK and changed the lives of some 80,000 people, including schoolchildren and young people. But evidence shows that Common Purpose is rather more than a Charity ‘empowering' people and communities’. In fact, CP is an elitest pro-EU political organisation helping to replace democracy in UK, and worldwide, with CP chosen ‘elite’ leaders. In truth, their hidden networks and political objectives are undermining and destroying our democratic society and are threatening ‘free will’ in adults, teenagers and children. Their work is funded by public money and big business, including international banks.

CP Exposed

[tcmgpt13]

Carla, Common Purpose all sounds like a front for communist teachings and organization. Just another name for it. Give it a new name, plaster on new clothes, and those who do not look under the skirts will never know what's really there. As my great grandmother, who my mother often quoted, used to say: Over hooey and under phooey. It is infuriating, all of it. As I once pointed out in an earlier post on this forum it is a new feudal system where most people are little more than slaves to the lords with the king at the top of the heap. It is all just another name for the game of control, greed, power and corruption which is let loose in the world from time to time. I would despair if I did not believe that in the end goodness will prevail.

Pat, it sounds as if you really worked hard in the past as a nurse for very little money. Hopefully the job itself was some compensation for everything you endured during that time. Thanks for sharing with us more of what organized socialized government "healthcare" is really doing in UK. It helps to hear about what is actually going on in other countries. I hope we all can find our way out of this morass. I think that taking the broader view, trying to keep ourselves free of this madness in the US, or, in the case of UK, freeing yourselves of this substandard care is extremely important. As things stand now, I think research into this illness is one of the last things that will happen (maybe never, as I truly believe those in government now do not care), not with a government intent on cutting health care for the elderly and those unfortunate to be disabled or chronically sick.