Everyone seems to agree with the idea of forcing new doctors to do some sort of minimum service in our public system. But there are “buts”.
The opposition parties supported – with nuances – Christian Dubé in his desire to conscript young doctors. A bill would be tabled soon, the content of which was not specified yesterday.
One thing is certain, the feeling of Quebecers “of not getting value for their money,” as the Minister of Health himself says, leads to this type of policy.
The reasoning seems implacable: university tuition fees are very low here. And medical students benefit. Their training costs some 10 times that of a nurse, for example. Their student debts will be nothing compared to those contracted by English Canadians or Americans to pay for their training.
Why, once qualified, should our doctors have the freedom to work elsewhere in the dominion or in another country, or in the private sector?
For us, access has become extremely problematic. The taxpayers, who pay for this great training, hang around everywhere when they are sick. We don’t have a family doctor. And going private means paying twice: once through taxes, again with the credit card.
Resistances of the spoiled
If this reasoning was so obvious, why not have it been done before?
Because there will be resistance, obviously. Already, the Federation of Resident Physicians of Quebec (FMRQ) has stepped up to the plate: the profession will be less attractive if it is combined with an assignment to work in the public for five to ten years.
One aspect makes me doubtful: we believed that our doctors were the spoiled rottens of our system. However, an increasingly large contingent of them is leaving for the private sector. The movement has grown recently and it has become a problem that even the College of Physicians intends to tackle. Currently, 775 of them work in the private sector exclusively, an increase of 70% since 2020. Is the private sector so much more lucrative?
Money isn’t all that matters, apparently. There are practice conditions that seem more difficult than before. So many surgeons hammer it home, for example: they operate less due to lack of access to technical platforms. The extreme unionization of medical personnel is often criticized. Shortages.
If we want to keep our doctors in the public eye, we will probably need obligations, but also other measures.
Bargaining
The government could, for example, as in Ontario, ensure that procedures are paid the same rate whether in the public or private sector. This would make the latter less attractive.
Let us hope in any case that the bill announced is not just a simple card brandished by Minister Dubé in his negotiations with the large doctors’ unions, a card which he could renounce in exchange for some concession from the docs.
