we’ll never have the leverage the comes with collective labour withdrawal.
The UK is offering raises amid the NHS doctors' strikes. Funny how the US thinks single payer is radical, and they have single employer. That lends itself to unionization.
Remember the acting guild has this power because you essentially can't work in the industry if you're not with them.
Based on how entrepreneurial and creative US doctors are in finding ways to make money, I'm not sure if the path of the UK or the acting guild is necessarily something you'd want. You're going to subject yourself to a lot of regulation and probably a lot fewer pathways to money-making.
The AMA has very low membership. If you were to unionize with them, they might start acting like the NHS in dictating what constitutes ethical practice, etc., which I cannot see US medicine getting on board with. If US doctors can bill for a surgery or take part in an execution (the AMA forbids this but they have no power), they'll do it. European medicine is very conservative with interventions compared to the US, no doubt because they have much more cohesive governance. Doctors also don't have the same cachet. That would probably be the effect of a governing board in the US whether it was through an actual government or a professional association that had any power.
I don't think you could have a union that only promoted your interests' financially (I assume your interests would be in lobbying to decrease the acceptance of non-MD/DOs?). Once they have power, they would use it across the board.
This is outside perspective and conjecture of course. In general, I think you all have the perks you want. Acting is different where very few actors are sharing in the enormous wealth of the entertainment industry. There's a lot of excess spending in US healthcare but is it really so much that wages of doctors would rationally be even higher were it distributed more fairly?
Tangent: Any sane medical union in my opinion would be upping the wages of MAs who in my experience as a patient are now being tasked with tasks of a doctor and get paid less than they could at a fast-food joint. This is after they "graduate" from predatory certificate mills with huge debt. They're the ones who could use some protection. I hear complaints about NPs/PAs, but in my experience I see MDs who are off in the clouds having MAs (which requires no licensure or medical training) interacting with patients and providing guidance. I can see why the nurses want to get higher licensure (NP)—they're no longer even wanted or respected in family medicine (again my experience as a patient). My doctor refers to his MA as a "nurse" too. I can't imagine any of them would stay in that role if it were not for the sunk cost of the certificate mills.
Would you all be interested in a union that protects all healthcare workers? Because the acting guild going on strike is not looking out primarily for A-list actors but regular working people, more the MA-equivalent. And maybe you would see less encroachment of midlevel providers, which seems a perennial concern, if the role of nurses was more respected and the standards for being a nurse had been maintained—it used to be quite difficult to become a nurse compared to today. A union that respected all those roles could be compelling. What if a doctor, like a family medicine doctor, were required to have a nurse? Flips on its head an NP required to have a collaborating doctor.
I'm generally sympathetic to anything that protects labor, but medicine is different in that unlike entertainment it directly affects people's wellbeing and so anything that didn't have patient wellbeing as one of its tentpoles is less interesting to me. To me that would mean things like: Anyone who provides patient care at a minimum needs licensure (again going back to MAs). And doctors, from my perspective at least, are like the Tom Cruises of medicine. (I can imagine you all might not feel that way.) They should be bringing up the wages and standards of all the roles below them, as well, which is how I see patient care improving along with their livelihoods improving.
All of what I propose would probably require cohesive government action because even if you all unionized it would likely just codify the existing balkanized fiefdoms of HCW categories fighting for their terf. I hear even you doctors wanting to lower standards (let medical school graduates practice right out of medical school). It seems everyone wants more money with less training, and all of the HCW groups use each other when it's expedient or at least symbiotic to do so. I can see how doctors are a bit unique in that politicians want more access to healthcare and that means creating new HCW categories which compete with you all. I guess I don't know enough about why there aren't more doctors. Is that gatekeeping that has protected doctors' interests historically which is now coming back to bite you all with in the influx of midlevels?
At least what the actors' guild is telegraphing is that this is a bottom up strike and they're bringing everyone along with them.
I apologize that this is so long-winded and not well written (which is why I've written less here in general). I've had cognitive impairment since January and have been waiting that long to get in to a neurologist.
