A Usenet persona calling itself BCITORGB wrote:

Scott thinks:
================
In Canada, however, compensation for nurses and doctors outside of
private
practices, particularly surgeons, is government controlled, so there is
little motivation to become a surgeon or a nurse. This leads to more
shortages, which leads to inadequate staffing, which leads to empty
beds
because there's no one to care for patients.
==============

Sorry Scotty, in Canada the compensation for doctors and nurses is
governed by a bargaining process between, for example, the nurses union
and various local/regional health boards. Here, in the Vancouver area,
for example, the doctor's union/association will bargain with, among
others, the board representing the Catholic hospitals in the region.

The doctor's association bargains for the pay schedule amounts which
determines doctors' pay.

Hmmmm.... bargaining.... what a unique concept....

And the ultimate upshot is that the government (through the health boards)
controls how much doctors and nurses get paid, and the boards get their
funding through the government, which controls the aggregate amount
available for health care in any locale. Thus, if there is X amount
available, and the demands of doctors and nurses equals X+1, something gets
cut. Either they cut the number of personnel, or they take the money from
some other part of the budget to compensate. That's why hospital
administrators are constantly facing cuts and shortages of basic equipment
and supplies I would imagine. It doesn't do any good to have a full staff if
there are no supplies or equipment to serve patients.

That's the nature of socialized medicine. The total amount available for
everybody's free medical services is set by the legislature, and however
it's parceled out, whether as compensation for staff or for facilities,
equipment and supplies, there's only X available, and once it's gone,
everybody has to put up with the shortages.

Down here, a hospital can have exactly as much equipment and as many
supplies, doctors and nurses as it can afford, based on its competitive
advantage in the free market.


As to med schools responding to market conditions.... well, I'm from
Missouri... are you telling me there's no collusion between the AMA
(that is the doc's association, right) and the med schools?

What sort of collusion are you alluding to? If you mean price-fixing, no,
because that would be a violation of federal law. If you mean a conspiracy
to limit med school admissions to keep the number of doctors artificially
low, I seriously doubt it, because that would probably be illegal, but if
not, it would certainly outrage everyone if it came to light. More
importantly, med schools are in competition with each other for students, so
it's extremely unlikely that they would shoot their own feet just to pander
to the AMA.
--
Regards,
Scott Weiser

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© 2005 Scott Weiser