Doctors’ pay scale needs restructuring
By Letter to the Editor on May 21, 2020.
A restructuring of our doctors’ pay scale is essential as what we have is not sustainable. Our doctors are the highest paid in all of Canada, and gobble up 30 per cent of our budget! Although many doctors use the present system fairly, there are others who are doubling, even tripling their average salary. The UCP has looked at other provincial models in an honest attempt to rectify this train wreck!
The doctors are inflaming this situation by threatening to walk; to where? Certainly not Canada as we are substantially the highest-paid province. The U.S.? Go for the high insurance costs because you’re now personally responsible for every minuscule thing you do! Of course, we appreciate our doctors, but let them come up with a better solution because we couldn’t afford them last year when we had an economy and we definitely need it to change now.
Jill Skriver
Lethbridge
6-5
Yes, you’re probably right there are some doctors who are abusing the system. Let’s find a way to discourage and stop this. Passing a law that allows you to rip up a legal agreement that both parties agreed to and impose your terms unilaterally to is not a proper way to do that. Giving notice that you’re leaving or withdrawing services under those conditions is completely within the physicians rights.
The way that the UCP has dealt with this issue is a lesson on how not to govern. Imagine if the province cut wages unilaterally and employees decided to leave. Wouldn’t it be their right to decide to leave If it didn’t make economic sense to stay?
Yes, our doctors are at the top nationally on compensation. But so is Alberta in general. The average physician compensation is $348,000 nationally, Alberta’s is $386,000. Do we want the lowest paid doctors? Ask yourself that when you’re in emergency, surgery or expecting. Alberta doctors also work the longest hours on average nationally.
Minister Shandros’s handling of this disagreement was unprofessional from the start. His response to rural physicians concerns was flippant. You’re leaving? We’ll get another doctor right away. Lol. How many years did it take to get a physician in Milk River?
I hope the 2 parties can sit down and come to an agreement that both can agree to and I wish the AMA the best in their court case to bring this to fruition.
gs172 has nailed it. Albertans in general have been the highest paid in Canada with our MLAs the highest paid and don’t forget who created this . it was so-called conservatives under Klein, Stelmach and Redford. Because of what Klein did they had to pay higher wages to keep more doctors from leaving.
The situation is very sustainable if they were collecting oil royalties and taxes at the Lougheed rates instead of slashing them to benefit their rich friends.
As a doctor friend has always maintained Canadian trained doctors can work anywhere in the world because they are in such high demand. Money is not the issue, respect is and the abuse they have taken at the hands of Ralph Klein and now Jason Kenney is unacceptable.
All they have asked for is for the government to sit down and work out a fair deal with them and they have been treated like dirt.
gs172, as fed up notes, has a far superior take on this than does the letter. not surprised.
Again, the 3 most signifcant expenses for health care in Alberta are: physician’s fees, rural health care and pharmaceuticals. The physician fee issue was manhandled by the Kenney UCP in an authoritarian manner. After all, the Kenney UCP are authoritarian populists, the toxic classic ultra right wing stuff of the day.
So what about rural health care and pharmaceuticals? There is the matter of rural votes for the UCP and the Big Pharma friends.
And then, there’s this today:
“Frustration grows as Tyler Shandro’s promised $2–per-hour-top-up for health care aides fails to appear, again” and can be read at: http://www.albertapolitics.ca
Again this is while corporate welfare includes a $4.7 billion dollar corporate payout and a decrease of corporate tax rates to 8%. There doesn’t seem to be any trouble rolling out that kind of money and breaks lickety-split, let alone the highest paid Premier and MLAs in the country and the $30 million/per year war room.
so.ab notes the cost of pharm to our health systems across the nation. this has been an issue for a long time, far too long, and the puppets we elect and pay big money to represent continue to stay mum on this issue and allow us to be gouged. another example of how our system is corrupted and hijacked by big corp. an additional costly joke is the dire lack of cures – only expensive maintenance – and the “medicines” are such that they need to be taken in tandem (ie. two types of the same meds for “better” results, and then another med to counter side effects). how are we such suckers and idiots?