French GPs by Stella Fitzgibbons MD
For the “misery loves company” section, here’s an article in Le Monde, of which I’m translating some of the quotes from practicing GPs:
- “Massive workloads, poor health coverage for us and our families, ever more-demanding patients…we can no longer recruit young doctors. And among those who remain, more and more are on the edge of burnout without being able to stop working”
- “Generalists have been systematically mistreated, both financially and in terms of respect…a radiologist on average makes 3 times as much as a generalist.”
- “The government wants to destroy our profession by selling it off in pieces…The health laws could render us totally dependent on an administration that care for numbers while we care for human beings.”
- “The recent laws will be the end of free practice and of the patient’s freedom to choose a doctor…It is by following patients longterm and seeing them regularly…that we can best care for their health.”
- “At the reimbursements offered we can’t afford to spend 30 minutes on a patient with complex problems…we will simply try to pick simple patients…As with any profession dealing with people, loss of respect for the job leads mathematically to loss of quality of the work done.”
I guess the Europeans don’t have a solution for everything either.
Stella Fitzgibbons MD
And yet we are continuously told by the pro-government medicine advocates that the U.S. lags behind Europe and the rest of the modern world in health care delivery, and that nationalized care is the only compassionate choice, and…I’m too nauseus, gotta go throw up my croissant.