Junior doctors in England will strike today for the 11th time over pay, amid concern in their union that a stoppage so close to the general election is an “own goal”.
Senior figures in the British Medical Association (BMA) believe the strike is pointless and “naive” and risks irritating Labour, which looks likely to be in power by next Friday and asked the union to call it off.
About 25,000 junior doctors are expected to refuse to work during the five-day stoppage, which begins at 7am today and runs until the same time next Tuesday, 2 July.
By the end of it, junior doctors will have been on strike for 44 days since they first took industrial action in March 2023 in pursuit of a 35% pay rise.
Sure, we can go to the American system. Doctors get paid more. They also have to pay $500k for their training. And US doctors get perhaps $40,000 a year while they are residents. Which is the same level we’re talking about here.
So, erm, where’s the beef?
One could privatise the NHS. Then we could see which hospitals go broke and which can afford to dish out more dosh.
Of course you can get medical treatment in Portugal, and I can get it in Oz if I need it, so my proposal might seem more sensible to us than to those living in the UK.
Let’s go to the US system. Tell them we’ll forgive their debts if they work for “Our Wonderful NHS” for 10 years 🙂
Oh wait, we offered them those terms already and they screamed in horror!
The majority of those junior doctors are which gender?
What’s the beef? Their pay increases haven’t been pulling away from private sector pay increases as fast as they used to be.
Some rough and ready calculations show that if 2000 is year zero, public sector pay is still ahead of private sector pay. Their beef is that they’ve gone down from accelerating 20% faster to only accelerating 5% faster. They are still ahead, and still getting further ahead, but how quickly they increase how fast they are getting further ahead is slowing down. Third differential has turned negative.
Bogan, the willingness of the NHS, or any European public health insurance system, to cover medical costs overseas is pretty limited.
It’s not zero, I know a bloke who had a pioneering operation in a big famous US hospital paid for by German public insurance, but it’s really not easy.
The entirety of healthcare financing, everywhere, is a massive racket.
Striking today is petty and vindictive..
They know damned well that labour will give them everything they want in a couple of months time. Still, anything that builds up the backlog leading to all that lovely overtime at £2k a day will do very nicely thank you (except none of these feckers have said thank you in years).
BMA – demands better pay for junior doctors while simultaneously supporting the importation of third-world doctors who undercut their own members pay….
“ One could privatise the NHS.”
How exactly do you privatise a charity?
So, they’re short just over a month’s pay in fifteen months?
Can’t be that short to begin with.