>The power of doctors does not come from collective action
Bullfuckingshit. The **only** power of **any** labor entity comes from collective action.
The doctors are protesting because they don’t want to allow a higher number of doctors? They want to keep the number artificially low to benefit themselves while making it harder for people to get treatment?
*Well fuck them, then.*
> Critics say that medical professionals are worried that the increased number of doctors will cause the field to lose some of its social prestige and competitive pay.
“They will have to take care of patient complaints”
Man, let me find some tears to cry that someone has to do the job they picked themselves.
The government doesn’t want to allocate more funds to doctors in the trenches, so instead the gvmt wants the ppl to focus on trainee collective action to protest the gvmt attempting to bandage the issue and continue the tradition of under-paying and overworking their doctors and doctoral trainees, by making it an issue of “oh they’re just worried about losing prestige and social status”. I don’t understand how that’s possible if they never have enough doctors to do that work in hospitals to begin with….instead of making calls for the gvmt to pay better wages, ppl are mad at the doctors and trainees….wild.
S Korea’s whole approach to healthcare is kinda fucked, partially because the government decided at some point to make it extremely privatized to copy the US (horrible move).
The physician shortages come to a large degree because working in hospitals or as pediatrics is just not very rewarding. Extremely long hours, middling compensation, and high risk of getting sued for any sort of negative outcome. And the private cosmetic surgery industry is absolutely BOOMING – S Korea has a cosmetic surgery tourism industry, with tons of people from China, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc. travelling there for such services. Cosmetic surgery is also very normalized in Korean society (my wife is originally from there and she is kind of the “odd one out” in her friend circle and broader family for never having had one. Some rich people will gift their children cosmetic surgery for graduation or their 18th birthday). So cosmetic surgeons are extremely well paid, which draws many doctors to that field and bumps up the average income of physicians in the statistics, but does not reflect the situation of those who actually do useful and necessary work in the less lucrative fields.
And it’s unclear how simply increasing the number of people who can study medicine in a given year will really fix that. At least not by itself – there also needs to be a return to stronger public regulations on medical services and pay. Cosmetic surgery profits should probably be taxed much more, and doctoral pay in hospitals or of pediatric doctors and similar actually needed specialisations needs to be increased, and provided with shorter work hours at the same time. Then increasing the number of medical students would make sense, as those students can then fill the open positions in hospitals upon graduation. Otherwise, more doctors will probably just mean more cosmetic surgeons.
But S Korea has a strong culture of blaming workers for the shortcomings of the economic system, government, or large corporations. It’s no surprise S Korea has the absolutely lowest birth rate of any country in the world – young people have no time and no financial security to start families in this environment. Just recently the government there was contemplating the idea to simply increase the weekly allowed number of working hours to deal with the decreasing number of workers due to the continued low birth rate – which of course would make it EVEN WORSE. It’s a maddening system.
8 comments
Sounds like something they’ll want to walk back.
>The power of doctors does not come from collective action
Bullfuckingshit. The **only** power of **any** labor entity comes from collective action.
The doctors are protesting because they don’t want to allow a higher number of doctors? They want to keep the number artificially low to benefit themselves while making it harder for people to get treatment?
*Well fuck them, then.*
> Critics say that medical professionals are worried that the increased number of doctors will cause the field to lose some of its social prestige and competitive pay.
“They will have to take care of patient complaints”
Man, let me find some tears to cry that someone has to do the job they picked themselves.
The government doesn’t want to allocate more funds to doctors in the trenches, so instead the gvmt wants the ppl to focus on trainee collective action to protest the gvmt attempting to bandage the issue and continue the tradition of under-paying and overworking their doctors and doctoral trainees, by making it an issue of “oh they’re just worried about losing prestige and social status”. I don’t understand how that’s possible if they never have enough doctors to do that work in hospitals to begin with….instead of making calls for the gvmt to pay better wages, ppl are mad at the doctors and trainees….wild.
S Korea’s whole approach to healthcare is kinda fucked, partially because the government decided at some point to make it extremely privatized to copy the US (horrible move).
The physician shortages come to a large degree because working in hospitals or as pediatrics is just not very rewarding. Extremely long hours, middling compensation, and high risk of getting sued for any sort of negative outcome. And the private cosmetic surgery industry is absolutely BOOMING – S Korea has a cosmetic surgery tourism industry, with tons of people from China, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc. travelling there for such services. Cosmetic surgery is also very normalized in Korean society (my wife is originally from there and she is kind of the “odd one out” in her friend circle and broader family for never having had one. Some rich people will gift their children cosmetic surgery for graduation or their 18th birthday). So cosmetic surgeons are extremely well paid, which draws many doctors to that field and bumps up the average income of physicians in the statistics, but does not reflect the situation of those who actually do useful and necessary work in the less lucrative fields.
And it’s unclear how simply increasing the number of people who can study medicine in a given year will really fix that. At least not by itself – there also needs to be a return to stronger public regulations on medical services and pay. Cosmetic surgery profits should probably be taxed much more, and doctoral pay in hospitals or of pediatric doctors and similar actually needed specialisations needs to be increased, and provided with shorter work hours at the same time. Then increasing the number of medical students would make sense, as those students can then fill the open positions in hospitals upon graduation. Otherwise, more doctors will probably just mean more cosmetic surgeons.
But S Korea has a strong culture of blaming workers for the shortcomings of the economic system, government, or large corporations. It’s no surprise S Korea has the absolutely lowest birth rate of any country in the world – young people have no time and no financial security to start families in this environment. Just recently the government there was contemplating the idea to simply increase the weekly allowed number of working hours to deal with the decreasing number of workers due to the continued low birth rate – which of course would make it EVEN WORSE. It’s a maddening system.
Good! They deserve to be heard