Very unpopular opinion — doctors are not the only profession that had its critical service allowance cut.
There are other professions that suffered the cut as well, such as nurses, who are already paid less than doctors as it is.
For years (27 years to be precise), doctors had an allowance which was not extended to other medicos, who were similarly overworked in the health care system.
The allowance was cut because there is an oversupply of doctors, which means there is no longer a critical need to hire doctors into the national health care system due to the sheer number of medical graduates.
We need to question our perennial obsession in seeing doctors with some kind of elevated status in society, because this directly contributed to the oversupply. (Don’t anyone tell me they studied medicine knowing full well they will be underpaid and overworked).
You know who else is underpaid and overworked? Other people in the health care sector who don’t get to have a “Dr” prefix. Or maybe millions of Malaysians outside the health care sector who have felt the effects of a slowing economy. (Let’s try thousands of media practitioners who lost their jobs in the last week).
I emphathise with doctors, but I would also appreciate if people don’t employ such a tunnel vision when it comes to looking at problems.
We need solutions to overcome the overcrowding of the health sector. By the way, a lot of us pay our own way to do our Masters, just saying.
This is not dissimilar to when people complained about a possible hike in outpatient fees by just RM1.
Don’t take the system for granted.
- This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of CodeBlue.
