So how can Canada dictate as a Physician it is illegal for me to buy a small office and hang out a shingle (maybe as my ancestor once did) and there not be one voice of protest from the international medical community that such edicts are paramount to employment slavery? Why do organizations like the CAP freely comingle with Canadian counterparts and do nothing?
Do not put forward the idea that Canadian pathologists have a good life, ample vacation and opportunities at happiness, this is immaterial and indeed completely relative. Such erroneous justification is not new, often used in history by Southern plantation owners, Roman officials and Soviety party members.
Canada is in search of a socialist utopia, one where all the people have ample healthcare and access to top quality pathologists. Canada as evident by this incident does not care the damage it does to the individual to achieve this grand goal. That should scare every single one of us.
It's kinda messed up that the three people discussing things the most in this thread are 2 premeds and LAdoc.
LAdoc, I'm a pretty big fan of yours but you are dead wrong with your assumptions on this one. Please don't take this as a personal attack, but it is fairly clear from what you've stated in this thread that you've had very little if any interaction with Canadian pathologists, let alone spent any time at their work place or in a Canadian hospital. Atleast copacetic has a pretty good idea about Canadian pathologists.
To clarify things, and to encourage Canadian pathoblasts, being a Canadian pathologist is a sweet gig, no matter how you look at it. In my province, Ontario, job offers right now are starting at 350,000/year. The pathologists at my centre have their incomes posted online (what the government pays them as a salary) and they receive other income on top of this to teach, do consults, and perform forensic autopsies. There is no overhead as the hospital fronts the bill. Hours can be as good as 10-3 (making the above salary), though 9-4 is most typical. At my centre the facilities are great, there are tons of PAs, and you get 6-7 weeks paid vacation per year. You're in charge of looking at 120 slides or so a day, the rest you leave for the next day.
Further, as alluded to in the article posted above, Newfoundland has had trouble retaining pathologists, if only because Newfoundland is a pretty isolated, barren, and frankly boring province with a **** economy. The "inquisition" was directed more towards the hospital's administration (and refusal to heed pathologists' warnings) rather than at pathologists themselves. These people will have no trouble finding positions outside that province and have probably only stayed for family reasons.
Finally, LAdocs assumptions about our "Soviet style" medical system/work conditions are entirely unfounded. Our economy and healthcare system are much more similar to yours than you think. Despite what many people believe, privatization is alive and well in our healthcare system. If I had the capital I could open up a GP clinic, medical lab or a radiology suite or a botox clinic or a Lasik clinic etc. For the former 3 the big difference is that the tax payer foots the bill for "medically necessary" procedures/tests, e.g. the lab/radiology suite presents a bill to the province (each test has a standardized fee), which then gives them a cheque. In fact, the richest physician in Canada is a pathologist (according to a Canadian Business article I read 3-4 years ago) who founded CML labs. The reason we don't have private surgical pathology practices per se is the prohibitive cost of establishing a laborotory AND convincing a hospital/group of doctors that there is a competitive advantage to diverting specimens towards the private clinic, since the government foots the bill anyways. The reason private radiology practices can exist is that they have the competitive advantage of speedier tests compared to hospital radiologists, as the latter are often used for more intense/heavy workloads from inpatient services and the purchasing of new equipment and staffing is encumbered by administrative red tape.
I'm not trying to say our system is better than the American one, but the myth of a 100% socialist system where the Gestapo control every move of every MD should be dispelled.
The last thing I want to add, actually, is that while we may all start at 350k or whatever, our salaries don't usually go too much higher from there since we're all paid fairly similarly and you can't really buy into a partnership or anything like that. Also, we do pay much higher tax up here than you guys. However, our Canadian dollar is *almost* worth as much as the USD, and earlier this year we were ahead for a while
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