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thomas davison

Doctors voting to strike are more concerned about their pockets than patients
By Julia Manning
PUBLISHED: 15:45, 30 May 2012 | UPDATED: 15:45, 30 May 2012

The result of the British Medical Association ballot of doctors has just been published with a majority voting for industrial action in protest of reforms to their pensions.

Quite why so many doctors cannot see that this is a massive own goal is a mystery.

At a time when millions are out of work, parents are struggling with household bills and the elderly have no reassurance of adequate social care, some doctors are showing that their concern is more for their pockets than their patients.
Industrial action: Doctors have voted to strike, but doctors' pensions are still some of the best in the UK
Many of my friends in medicine will be horrified and embarrassed at the thought of their colleagues striking, knowing that this action will tarnish them all.
Surely up and down the land in months to come, GPs will rightly redden as they tell a patient they can't have a medicine or procedure on the NHS because there isn't enough money!
More...Doctors vote to strike over pensions as patients are warned to expect avalanche of cancelled appointments and operations

As the young doctor's group Remedy UK have previously said, action over pensions is "not morally justifiable".

It ignores the economic crisis that we as a nation are facing and stays arrogantly quiet on the fact that doctor's pensions are still one of the best in UK.

Not only this, but in their retirement they will still be on more than double the average wage.
Whilst the BMA are hastily saying that patients won't suffer, this can only be said from the head-in-sand ostrich position.

Longed-for procedures and tens of thousands of appointments for which people have made arrangements will be cancelled, whilst the striking will achieve nothing because there is not enough money to meet their demands.
The irony is that it is a result of doctor's successes that many of us are living longer, notably doctors themselves who in a US study were shown to outlive lawyers and accountants.
If there is any injustice in the pension reforms it is for those who are in blue-collar jobs who live in areas of lower life expectancy.

Retirement for them may be short lived, as opposed to the twenty years or so anticipated by a doctor.
There will be no public sympathy. With an NHS pension scheme requiring a Treasury bail-out from 2013-14 (i.e. more of our tax-payers money), doctors need to accept that their deal is still one of the best around.

If they persist with their action, they could find the public not only object, but find out what doctors are still getting and oppose that too.

At a time when the average man cannot make ends meet doctors are striking about their gold plated pensions, shame on them.