Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Doctors on strike or taking a hike
What can Slovakia do to keep doctors from heading west in search of better salaries and conditions? Are their demands reasonable and are they right in threatening to strike? What has been your experience of medical care and doctors here? The article does not seem to report the doctors' side of the argument completely. For instance, the Health Ministry claims there is no reason why doctors should be against the privatization of hospitals. Any ideas as to why doctors may oppose this measure?
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Doctors have tremendously low wages, patients are unsatisfied, health insurance agencies are in great depth and doctors are thinking of massive resignation. This is a brief description of the situation the Slovak health care is in.
ReplyDeleteOnly when there will be none to cure Slovakians, people will realise how incredibly important doctors are. I truly believe that until someone dies because of mass doctor’s resignation, there will not be any significant reform. Even this article shows us how politicians blame everything onto their opposition ,as mrs Zollerová did. Therefore I encourage Slovakian doctors to go to the better paid countries where the labour market have been opened.
There are a number of reasons for that. The first one is the low status. I am outraged when I look at the Slovak “Smotanka” where are the so called celebrities presented. You can see there businessmen,politicians,singers, actors or golddiggers, but not a single doctor. There is also a quite negative stereotype about doctors, that they only care about their well being, not patients. But I just wonder who is more important for our society, a TV news moderator who has always a new lover to show, or a doctor who carries out hours long surgeries for 1 000 E a month? Furthermore, our media are filled with rare,discrediting cases where doctors did some mistakes in their diagnosis, but none of them talks about the countless achievements of doctors. At last, oneself must be very intelligent in order to become a doctor and therefore they deserve higher social status.
The second reason is the money, Slovakian doctor is paid as much as an ordinary policeman. So unless the doctor is corrupted, there is a very low chance of increasing his salary. Health insurance agencies are inefficient (the state ones) and thus they always demand help from the state. This is the place where a lot of money is lost, and that’s why another injection of 156 millions for health insurance agencies will not help the system. I am frustrated to see the healthcare insurances and pharmaceutical companies having huge profits meanwhile the doctors are failing to feed their families.
Because of these reasons I agree with Mr. Dragula, the Slovak chamber of physicians has been lobbying for years for the increase of the doctors wages, unsuccessfully. Czech doctors were able to take the resolute step that Mr Dragula talks about, but I am rather sceptical when it comes to Slovak doctors. I cannot think of a single major boycott in Slovakia since the 1989, it is in Slovakian nature not to risk or to organize massive strikes. I hope that on one day, a Slovakian doctor will have the same status and salary as in Germany.
I think it is clear for everybody when I say that our health care is not at best shape. We lack qualified doctors, nurses are underpaid, medical devices are old, people are not satisfied and what is most important to me our, health care produces debt and is not able to function without government help. Now, I understand that doctors and nurses are against privatization, after all they would lose a lot of guarantees, including wages, social and health benefits and steady employment. And people are not very fond of privatization either, as they would lose charge-free appointments which are essential for old people and people with low income. However, I think that the government should start privatization of medical institutions, but not hastily and not all institutions at one.
ReplyDeleteWe must understand what is the number one priority of this government, and of all governments in the world, it is to be re-elected. They may say many things including better economy, better standard of living, improvement of health care, education, infrastructure and etc. They will try to fix all of those matters, but ultimately they want nothing but to get re-elected.
In order for a government to get re-elected it must fix only things that appear to public and fix it in a way that satisfies most but solves nothing. We cannot expect this or any other government to fire big number of doctors or nurses or any other state employees, because they wouldn’t be very popular and might lose many potential voters in general elections. Firing state employees might seem a bit harsh; however, almost all state-owned companies need a revision of labor. Because, we certainly have a lot of good and qualified people for the job, however we can also find many so-called workers who only drain resources that can and should be better employed. However, once the firms are privatized, and will function under government supervision, it won’t be difficult for the management to fire staff, because they don’t need to get elected and be popular. They will manage firms, in this case hospitals, more efficiently and more effectively than if state would own them and will create profit, or at least break even.
Privatization of either large firms or large number of firms is not very easy to manage. Many people, especially the opposition lead by Smer, will demand higher compensations, more transparency in the process or they will try to stop it all. However, they must keep in mind that privatized firms such as SPP are better off in private hands than in public hands which are very slippery. If at least a few number of hospitals get privatized it may boost health care and provide better services.
Privatization of health care is and never will be a popular move, however, my opinion is that private companies are an improvement comparing to public ownership and will provide good services at reasonable prices as they must compete in a market. Privatization of that big number of firms will take some time and because general elections are every four years, I don’t see it coming very soon.