A Look at UK Puts U.S. Doctors 'Plight' in Perspective

Doctors are pleading with Congress to reverse the 3.4% cut in Medicare payments that took effect this month. In a recent interview, the head of the American Medical Association, Dr. Jesse Ehrenfeld, called the policy "unconscionable," adding that "physicians continue to struggle."

If American physicians think they have it rough, they should consider the plight of their peers across the Atlantic. U.K. doctors are so poorly compensated that, earlier this month, junior physicians in England staged a six-day strike — the longest in the 75-year history of the government-run National Health Service. Junior doctors in Wales launched a three-day strike of their own on January 15.

These are just the latest instances of NHS workers walking off the job to demand better pay. The protests should serve as a reminder to U.S. doctors — and indeed, all Americans — of the dangers inherent to government-run health care.

Single-payer advocates like Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., often tout Britain's health system as a model to which America should aspire. But the truth is, the NHS has been an unmitigated disaster since its establishment — never more so than in the last few years.

Meager pay for doctors is just one of the program's many failings — hence the throngs of picketing physicians. For 15 years, pay increases for junior NHS doctors have failed to keep up with inflation. Using the inflation measure known as the retail price index, the British Medical Association estimates that salaries fell 26% between 2008-09 and 2021-22.

The result is that some of these highly-trained medical professionals now earn less per hour than baristas or fast-food workers.

But it isn't just new doctors who are criminally undercompensated. A 2021 survey found that U.K. doctors earn less than half, on average, of what American doctors take home.

Unfortunately, the biggest losers in the U.K. health system aren't providers or employees but patients. This is most evident in the delays endemic to the NHS.

Even amid a relatively mild flu season this winter, well over one-quarter of British patients were forced to wait more than four hours for admission to an emergency room in December. About one in 12 suffered through waits of over 12 hours.

Patients experiencing a heart attack, meanwhile, waited an average of 46 minutes for an ambulance to arrive.

And this was before thousands of British doctors took to the streets demanding better pay — an action which led to more than 110,000 appointment cancellations in England.

Thanks in part to waits like these, more and more British patients are turning to private providers. Among them is Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, who underwent abdominal surgery this week at The London Clinic, a private hospital in London that routinely treats members of the royal family.

As The Mirror, a British newspaper wrote, "The private clinic is a world away from an NHS hospital, with each room boasting air-conditioning and an en-suite bathroom."

For many Americans, such "luxuries" are the baseline expectation for a hospital stay.

A survey from last April found that 13% of Britons had paid for medical care in the previous year, while another 27% had considered it. In recent years, two of America's leading medical institutions — the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic — have opened facilities in England to meet this demand.

So while American progressives extol the virtues of government health care, British patients are voting with their feet for something closer to America's market-oriented system.

The British example should dissuade U.S. doctors from flirting with single-payer health care. For decades, they've been protesting underpayment by America's largest single-payer system, Medicare. Medicare reimbursement for doctors has declined 26% since 2001, after taking inflation into account.

Yet an astonishing number of doctors remain enamored with single-payer. As recently as 2019, 49% of physicians supported Medicare for All, according to polling from Medscape.

That position is at odds with the interests of doctors — and represents a real and urgent threat to the well-being of patients. If U.S. doctors want a preview of what Medicare for All will bring, they should take note of their striking peers in Great Britain.