I read with great interest an article about low pay of doctors in the HINDUSTAN TIMES of Chandigarh, on the 28-05-2011. " Doctors do not produce large financial profits while engineering/ business management students do', was one of the arguments put forth for paying low salaries to doctors. I wonder how this can be substantiated.
For various reasons, we do not value our health until we fall sick. We do not hesitate to buy kgs of gold, or change our mobile phones every week, but we haggle shamelessly at the doctor's clinic.
One has to understand the role of good healthcare in producing good finances-both personal and at the workplace. Everybody should be able to understand and calculate the cost of being unwell-it means not being able to engage in income-generation that day plus having to hire help to do one's necessary work for the day plus continuing low efficiency and need for support for few more days. This is the daily cost of ill-health. By shortening this period as much as possible, your doctor makes you less of an economic liability. Is this not a form of profit, for the individual and his employer?
Other than not valuing health, we also dont realise the cost of ill-health and are prone to be carried away by the trend of bargaining for everything. So there is cut=throat competition based only on the price and the cheapest doctor wins. Thus invariably, the value of something and its price do not match. (The other other profession which suffers from this mismatch is teaching.)
I wish to ask, that if the economic value of medicine and teaching are not so great, then why are more and more schools and hospitals coming up? And why are their investors getting richer and richer?
The fact is that both these professionals generate huge profits through their work, but their lack of knowledge of business as well as tendency to believe in the 'noble=poverty' myth makes them unble to demand their rightful share of the profits-that is- the true price of healthcare.
For various reasons, we do not value our health until we fall sick. We do not hesitate to buy kgs of gold, or change our mobile phones every week, but we haggle shamelessly at the doctor's clinic.
One has to understand the role of good healthcare in producing good finances-both personal and at the workplace. Everybody should be able to understand and calculate the cost of being unwell-it means not being able to engage in income-generation that day plus having to hire help to do one's necessary work for the day plus continuing low efficiency and need for support for few more days. This is the daily cost of ill-health. By shortening this period as much as possible, your doctor makes you less of an economic liability. Is this not a form of profit, for the individual and his employer?
Other than not valuing health, we also dont realise the cost of ill-health and are prone to be carried away by the trend of bargaining for everything. So there is cut=throat competition based only on the price and the cheapest doctor wins. Thus invariably, the value of something and its price do not match. (The other other profession which suffers from this mismatch is teaching.)
I wish to ask, that if the economic value of medicine and teaching are not so great, then why are more and more schools and hospitals coming up? And why are their investors getting richer and richer?
The fact is that both these professionals generate huge profits through their work, but their lack of knowledge of business as well as tendency to believe in the 'noble=poverty' myth makes them unble to demand their rightful share of the profits-that is- the true price of healthcare.
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