The BBC reported on an odd trend in British medicine today — there are too many female doctors. One of the central planners of Great Britain’s medical system touched off a controversy by suggesting that medical schools might have to start discriminating against women in order to boost the number of male doctors.
The problem with female doctors goes to the heart about debates over why men earn more, on average, than women. Female physicians in Great Britain end up working significantly less than male physicians do. According to statistics from the Royal College of General Practitioners, female physicians work an average of 24 years versus 31 years for men.
What are they doing during those 7 years? They are temporarily leaving the profession or entering part-time work, probably to accommodate other priorities such as raising children.
Add to that the fact that about 60 percent of students in medical school are women, and the result is an almost certain shortage of doctors in Great Britain during the next decade. The government says it will find a way to scrounge up 2,000 extra physicians, when the British Medical Association estimates that at least 10,000 more physicians are needed.
So, should medical schools in Great Britain start discriminating against women? Of course not. The problem here has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with Great Britain’s National Health System.
In the United States, the health care system deals with shortages through the free market. For example, over the past several years there has been a pretty marked shortage of nurses. Competition for available nurses has driven nursing salaries higher, in turn enticing more people to become nurses. Eventually the number of nurses available will meet or exceed the demand and nursing salaries will likely level out and likely decline in some places.
Much of Great Britain’s health care system is controlled and centrally planned by the state. The National Health System is perpetually short of cash and cannot afford to pay market rates for doctors. This means that talented doctors open up expensive private practices or else go into other fields or emigrate to other countries. The result is the shortage seen today which the British Medical Association wrongly associates with simply a decline in the number of men seeking to be general practitioners.
Source:
Medicine ‘may have to favour men’. The BBC, April 8, 2002.