Doctors Protest Influx of Doctors

[Art]

It seems Cuba has a surplus of doctors and is lending them to Venezuela and Bolivia to treat the poor which it seems is not going down well with the local medical population. What! Treat sick, poor people for free?? What a dangerous precedent!! 

Venezuela medics march over jobs


Hundreds of Venezuelan doctors have marched through the country's capital, Caracas, demanding the expulsion of Cuban doctors.
President Hugo Chavez says he invited the medical staff into the country to provide free health care for the poor.

But Venezuela's doctors, who are also asking for better wages, say the Cubans are taking their jobs.

They say the government is trading its oil revenues to pay for some 20,000 Cuban doctors and dentists.

Dressed in white medical gowns and bearing national flags, some 400 doctors and medical staff carried banners reading 'No More Cubanisation!' as they marched.

Doctors for oil

Under a special programme set up by Mr Chavez and his ally Cuban President Fidel Castro, Cuban doctors, dentists and nurses work in newly set-up medical centres in Venezuela's poorest areas.

In exchange, the oil-rich country sends Cuba 90,000 barrels of oil a day.

The "Barrio Adentro" or "Into the Neighbourhood" programme has won Mr Chavez great popularity among the country's poor.

It is believed to have helped him win a referendum last year.

But organisers of the march say salaries have remained unchanged for four years and many cannot now find work due to the influx of Cuban doctors.

'Indoctrination'

They say that while the Cuban-staffed clinics are equipped with medicines and modern machines, public hospitals often lack basic medical equipment.

"Venezuelan doctors are underpaid and many are unemployed," trauma specialist Pedro Carvallo told Reuters news agency.

He said many Cuban doctors do not hold proper medical qualifications.

"These Cubans are political agents who come to indoctrinate, not to work as doctors," Mr Carvallo said.

Mr Chavez says the Cubans have accepted jobs in areas, including crime-ridden slums on the outskirts of towns, where many Venezuelans refuse to work.

Fidel Castro has said that he aims to increase the number of Cuban health care workers in Venezuela to up to 30,000 by the end of the year.

Bolivia protest over Cuba medics
Doctors in the Bolivian capital La Paz have staged a protest against an influx of Cuban medics offering free care in poor and rural parts of the country.
The doctors, whose protest included offering free treatment themselves, say the Cubans take jobs away from unemployed Bolivian doctors.

They want the Bolivian government to subsidise the national medical service, so it is free at the point of delivery.

But the Bolivian President Evo Morales has accused the doctors of selfishness.

Over 1,000 doctors are reported to have been dispatched by Cuba to provide health services in Bolivia, along with several thousand in Venezuela.

Cuba has reportedly equipped some 20 Bolivian hospitals and is behind Operation Miracle, a drive to operate on the eyes of 14,000 Bolivians with cataracts.

'Foreign influence'

Thursday's protest was the second organised by doctors from the Medical College of La Paz.


The college president Eduardo Chavez, a driving force behind both protests, said "a fundamental social pillar such as the health of a people" should not be left in the hands of foreigners.

He complained that Bolivian doctors were not being given opportunities to join the ranks of the Cuban doctors working in poor, undeveloped areas of Bolivia - one of the poorest countries in the world.

And he said the recently elected government of Mr Morales should focus their efforts on providing healthcare free at the point of delivery.

The protest comes amid growing criticism by opposition politicians of what they say is the influence of the Cuban government in Bolivia.

'Medical inroads'

But Mr Morales has accused the doctors of acting selfishly and against the interests of Bolivia's most disadvantaged people.

Deputy Health Minister Juan Alberto Nogales said Bolivia's health indices were among "the worst in Latin America, if not the world", and were a permanent preoccupation for the government, according to the news agency Efe.

"In those places where we are supporting our Cuban colleagues there has never been a medical service," he said, rejecting the doctors' assertion that the Cubans were taking away jobs.

Personally I think it's a great initiative. Doctors generally must rank right up there with politicians in selfcentred greed.

Was there ever a time when people became doctors because they actually wanted to help people rather than line their own pockets?

Here in Ireland the gov't built a huge new hospital in Dublin. It remained closed for over two years because consultants refused to work there unless they were given public facilities for free in the hospital to treat their private patients. These 1,700 consultants already typically 'earn' around 380,000 euro a year with the highest 'earners' netting over a million. Sweden in comparison pays it's consultants 80,000 euro a year. Eventually the gov't gave in to them to get the hospital open. 

Recently the consultants have threatened to go on strike because the gov't said it no longer wanted to subsidise their insurance costs for treating their private patients. Besides fully covering their insurance costs for their work in public practice incredibly the tax payer has been paying 80% of the consultants' insurance costs for their private patients besides giving them free use of hospital beds and services.

[Polly]

Doctors, lawyers, and the POTUS, must be the most overrated people in the world.

One day, if all of us can accept death as THE certainty that it really is, we will have little use for doctors.  And the astronomical amount of money we spend on modern medicine, can be spent on the poor and the needy.

[The Statutory Ape]

I can understand to some degree.  If I went through hell to become a doctor, wound up getting paid dick, then was supplanted by people from another country that have everything they need without any hassle and work for free... I'd probably be pissed too.

Where they mention that these doctors refuse to work in worse neighborhoods I'm wondering just what the situation with that is.  Do they not want to work in the worse neighborhoods because they are likely to be paid even less for work that's that much harder, more dangerous, and where they wont have all the supplies they need?

[Art]

I can understand to some degree.  If I went through hell to become a doctor, wound up getting paid dick, then was supplanted by people from another country that have everything they need without any hassle and work for free... I'd probably be pissed too.

Where they mention that these doctors refuse to work in worse neighborhoods I'm wondering just what the situation with that is.  Do they not want to work in the worse neighborhoods because they are likely to be paid even less for work that's that much harder, more dangerous, and where they wont have all the supplies they need?

It all depends on why you became a doctor in the first place. If it was just to make money then yes you would be pissed at being undercut. But if you look at it from the point of view that everybody should be entitled to health care irrelevent of ability to pay then one's sympathies would be with those who are currently exempted from medical care through inabilty to pay. Rich people have enough advantages in life as it is without being able to purchase life itself at the expense of others.

IMO if you want to make money then become a lawyer. Doctors should be recruited from those people with a genuine desire to help others. I am sure there would be no problem recruiting such people if the profession was reorganised to be geared to actually do what they purport to do.

To put the consultants income in perspective the prime minister's salary is €252,000 and politicians here aren't exactly reknowned for their pay restraint but even their greed is dwarfed by that of doctors..

[UnaBomber]

One day, if all of us can accept death as THE certainty that it really is, we will have little use for doctors.

Ermm. yeh right... So the next logical step would be that: you dont think life is precious enough to hold on to? If someone is sick, let them die as it is inevitable they will (perhaps in 60 years, in a childs case) die.

yeh guess that is exactly why we have evolved so far 

<---- Poly

[The Statutory Ape]

Doctor/nurse/EMT are professions that I think need a serious overhaul.  Medicine and education are two things that I have very socialist opinions on.  Doctors who service the community (not breast implant doctors and the like) should work directly under the government and not have to pay so much for their schooling in my opinion (preferably they shouldn't have to pay for thier schooling and training at all so long as they give their services to their community).

I think that quite a few doctors take their jobs because they truely want to help people.  Not all of them are so commited though that they are willing to go through problems like a steady stream of dangerous patients, lack of proper supplies to get their work done, lack of pay to compensate them for their stress and their own medical problems, and watching people die left and right because they are unable to give them proper treatment.

One of the biggest issues in California education is the fact that the schools that need the most help are the ones that pay the least and are the most dangerous.  A teacher can genuinely love teaching and helping kids but have serious issues working someplace where their lives are potentially in danger, the kids don't want to learn, and even if they did they barely have the supplies to properly teach them.  Even Sophia/Alexandra, who definetly loves her job, said that she was rather disaffected when she worked at an underprivledged school and eventually wound up leaving.

[Art]

In the UK and Ireland we have had a national health service for years.

The basic principle when it was founded was that treatment was dictated by need not by money and was free at point of use.

Unfortunately wealthy people were unhappy with this as they wanted to buy their way to the top of the queue so over time to a lesser or greater extent depending on which gov't is in power the system became corrupted and so private medicine these days intereferes directly with public medicine resulting in pain, suffering and even death for those who cannot afford private treatment.

Here in Ireland where taxpayers pay 6,800 euro per person per year to fund the national health it has become a disgrace whereby doctors already paid a huge salary from the public purse actually spend more than half their time treating their private patients who thus jump ahead of the people on the public health waiting lists.

IMO the way to solve this is to;

1) Train an abundance of doctors to smash their price fixing cartel. At the moment the doctors council decides how many doctors will be trained each year despite the fact that here and in the UK their education is paid for by the taxpayer.
2) Insist doctors employed by the gov't work exclusively for the national health.
3) Do not allow private practices to use public hospital facilities. If people want to pay for private treatment then fine, let them but in private hospitals with private doctors. They should not be massively subsidised by the very people they are shafting.
4) Completely revamp current working practices. As an example only consultants can release a person from hospital and as a consultant may only visit that hospital once a week an enormous amount of beds are taken up unnecessarily waiting for a consultant to rubber stamp a patients discharge.
 When it was suggested that other competent members of staff could make the decision the consultants threw a fit as they saw it as a threat to their power and income.

The problem in getting any of these ideas implemented is that the medical lobby has the same sort of power over gov't here as the gun lobby does over the US gov't.

[Polly]

  I believe it is the first time this particular smilie is used?

One day, if all of us can accept death as THE certainty that it really is, we will have little use for doctors.

Ermm. yeh right... So the next logical step would be that: you dont think life is precious enough to hold on to? If someone is sick, let them die as it is inevitable they will (perhaps in 60 years, in a childs case) die.

yeh guess that is exactly why we have evolved so far 

<---- Poly

Dichotomising the issue, aren't we?  Just because we acknowledge and realise fully that death is a certainty, doesn't mean that we will necessarily trivialize life or decide since all of us must die anyway, we must well die now, or at the point when it becomes inconvenient to live as decided by those who have the say.

One of the arguments of those who are against euthanasia is that "life is holy" is the inviolable linchpin of our civilsation, without this inviolable anchor notion, all hell will break loose and we will either degenerate into animals or be slaughtered like animals. 

I say exactly because life is holy, not just my life, your life, all the lives of our loved ones (collectively "our lives"), but the lives of other human beings as well, that we must consider, when we are prolonging our lives with medical assistance, at what expense are we doing so?   We must consider how many people would otherwise benefit from the resources that is to be used on me to extent the advent of a prospect that is a certainty?

Afterall we will all have had a life time to prepare for this certainty, and to come to terms with it.  If somehow we are still trying to run away from the certainty at all cost, to clinch onto life at all cost, I'd say we have failed the no. 1 task in life.   

[The Statutory Ape]

The problem in getting any of these ideas implemented is that the medical lobby has the same sort of power over gov't here as the gun lobby does over the US gov't.

The medical(particularly pharmaceutical) lobby here is pretty powerful too.  If they think that they can get plenty of money from the government they may go for public health but more than likely they can get more money straight from the people.  People are pretty angry with the FDA though since they have been protecting the monopoly that the drug companies have here from foreign competition.

I say exactly because life is holy, not just my life, your life, all the lives of our loved ones (collectively "our lives"), but the lives of other human beings as well, that we must consider, when we are prolonging our lives with medical assistance, at what expense are we doing so?   We must consider how many people would otherwise benefit from the resources that is to be used on me to extent the advent of a prospect that is a certainty?

I think the idea is that if rich people pay the very large sums of money that most brand new medical procedures cost then putting it to use stimulates the refinement of the processes which will eventually make the processes cheaper and more accessible to people with less money.  So while this rich person may be selfish in the manner by which they are allocating resources it could possibly help other less fortunate people in the future.  Right now I think that cryogenics is something that mainly financially backed by rich people trying to live forever but imagine how much research is getting done because of that money.

[UnaBomber]

Dichotomising the issue, aren't we?

Its the same issue. From your first post, I concluded that you felt life was overvalued (thus doctors were). You have now started to make more sence in your newer post  However Since you now touched on something that is completely based on theology and principals we will have to conclude that (using Arts words of the day) we have the likelyhood of falling into a hylic pluralism trap, where there is no point to continue debating.

Just because we acknowledge and realise fully that death is a certainty, doesn't mean that we will necessarily trivialize life or decide since all of us must die anyway, we must well die now, or at the point when it becomes inconvenient to live as decided by those who have the say.

I think everyone realises they will die, and everyone knows it is a certainty. However NOBODY in there right mind would feel that "Doctors are of little use" would they?

[The Smoking Man]

IMO the way to solve this is to;

1) Train an abundance of doctors to smash their price fixing cartel. At the moment the doctors council decides how many doctors will be trained each year despite the fact that here and in the UK their education is paid for by the taxpayer.
2) Insist doctors employed by the gov't work exclusively for the national health.
3) Do not allow private practices to use public hospital facilities. If people want to pay for private treatment then fine, let them but in private hospitals with private doctors. They should not be massively subsidised by the very people they are shafting.
4) Completely revamp current working practices. As an example only consultants can release a person from hospital and as a consultant may only visit that hospital once a week an enormous amount of beds are taken up unnecessarily waiting for a consultant to rubber stamp a patients discharge.
 When it was suggested that other competent members of staff could make the decision the consultants threw a fit as they saw it as a threat to their power and income.

The problem in getting any of these ideas implemented is that the medical lobby has the same sort of power over gov't here as the gun lobby does over the US gov't.

I agree with this however, when threatened like this (and they did it in Canada) doctors just threaten to fuck off to the USA and open a plastic surgery clinic in LA.

Now, I don't know how many more the infrastructure of LA can support but it sure shuts the government up mighty quick.

Doctors, unfortunately have the ability to zip from country to country becasue of their educational status and perceived need in the destination nation.

Also, most of them have an income which already gives them a right to emigrate.

To go to Canada at the top of an immigration list, one only has to promise to invest $250,000CAD... Which is how most of the Chinese bought their way in in 1997 from HK.

So, basically, you can't threaten a doctor nor deny him a passport.

[Polly]

I think everyone realises they will die, and everyone knows it is a certainty. However NOBODY in there right mind would feel that "Doctors are of little use" would they?

Well I said "overrated".  Things can be tremendously useful and still be overated.

[Art]

I think everyone realises they will die, and everyone knows it is a certainty. However NOBODY in there right mind would feel that "Doctors are of little use" would they?

Well I said "overrated".  Things can be tremendously useful and still be overated.

Take women for example. Not that I have anything against women, I think every man should own one. 

[Polly]

  Can't live with them, can't live without them.

[The Statutory Ape]

Can't live with them, can't live without them.

That's why most men keep their's tethered to something in the kitchen.