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Originally Posted by llama64
I'm certainly a vicious adversary of any form of private health care system - such a fundamental social service has to be managed in a public manner as far as I'm concerned.
But... the problem you mention is real and certainly the biggest challenge facing public healthcare these days (closely followed by piss poor management).
It's even worse for nurses. Brand spanking new nurses are finding more and more that they can get better pay and better hours in the the United States and can more importantly find avenues for advancement. In Canada, new nurses are treated like dirt by the system and advancement is basically non-existent except for a privileged few. It's entirely based on time served with very little consideration for merit.
How do you balance encouraging professionals to stay in our system without selling it to the highest bidder? I have yet to see anyone answer this question in North America. Apparently we are supposed to believe a person's health is a commodity to be traded. Such an evil notion...
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Two problems here. One is similar to teaching.....their union. Unions just about always promote those having put in more time, rather that those who on merit deserve promotion.
The other problem is the consumer themselves. We as consumers have to put more stock in our nurses, in our day care workers, in our senior nursing home workers, in our home care providers, in our doctors and tell the various authorities that the pay scale at present is out of whack.
When you pay some of these workers per hour about the same as what you pay for a glass of wine in a restaurant, something is wrong with that picture. Surely our health, our children, our seniors are worth more than that?
And with doctors, the system itself is the problem. Every doctor is paid the same per visit, per referral, per consultation...unless you are a specialist or surgeon doing higher skilled procedures. So the only way doctors can earn more money is to either negotiate a small increase in their present pay scale, or see more patients. That is simply not a good system.