In that case $155k is a lot more reasonable.

http://www.milliondollarjourney.com/doctor-salaries-not-as-high-as-you-think.htm

ME: Things like merit weren’t what I meant by barriers. I guess you could break things into natural barriers (such as scholastic aptitude for a PhD, physical prowess for a fire fighter or social skills for a sales person) and artificial barriers (such as unions or “quotas” for doctors). I have no problem with natural barriers (expecting people to do a good job), I don’t like artificial ones (arbitrary political rules designed to protect those already working in the field).

Guiness416: That sucks that you’ve had so many problems with the local health care (interesting to hear your experience contrasting it with the US).

The surgeons I know who won’t take on student rotations in their practices all say they slow them down too much. Even the nurses don’t want students under their feet! Patient waiting times are so long that it’s hard to argue for even longer waiting lists, even though it’s obvious that training more doctors and giving them more OR time (but that’s a whole other kettle of fish) is what’s needed. I do agree that once trained, residents can help lessen the workload, but the bottleneck is the time required to do the training in the first place.

As it is, there are a couple of surgeons that I know of in our city who shouldn’t be operating for one reason or another. The shortage is so dire that the hospitals don’t have what it takes to remove their privileges.

Any way I think about it, the ageing and sickening public is screwed. I don’t see voters gathering up the political will to demand significantly more dollars from our stretched tax base to make healthcare work. I also don’t see doctors and nurses settling for less pay, especially in the current situation when it’s so hard to get anybody from bankers to unionized workers to make concessions. It’s about money, but it’s also about deeply entrenched vested interests. The underlying problems in Canada’s healthcare system are not transparent to the public and the politicians won’t talk about them honestly.

Your best bet is to do what you can to stay healthy because it’s only going to get worse.

The grass is always greener …. doing what I do for work, I spend a lot of time with both the trades and the white collar construction people. Trust me, both think the other side has a sweet deal.

I do think there was a lot of jealousy expressed during the strike (although maybe not here). It may have been venting rather than actually wanting to become a binman, but it was definitely there. I wonder what the stats are on how many people visited the City of Toronto and other government employment pages on their websites during the strike. I know I poked around on them!

More importantly, does Mike let you bank your sick days, Mr Cheap?

Finally, and this is not related to Brendan’s comment, but I think the CUPE workers were stupid:
1. Miller is their best ally, they have weakened him and chances are the next mayor will be anti union, good luck getting any good contract then.
2. They lost the tax payers sympathy… imagine if they said that “due to current conditions we will accept the deal for 2 years and negotiate then when things improve”. People would be very sympathetic to their cause the next time around.