SAN FRANCISCO —The ills of the nation’s medical system, especially privatization of hospitals and nursing homes whose investors put profits over patients, are driving increasing numbers of doctors to unionize.
But it’s not just 500 MDs in Minnesota or several hundred more in Chicago. Now, the Service Employees’ sector, SEIU Doctors United, is pursuing unionization of 10,000 doctors at the University of California medical system.
The union planned to unveil its campaign at an afternoon press conference on July 23 at San Francisco General Hospital. MDs at the University of California, San Francisco will share their frustrations with the medical system. The object of the organizing drive is “to give doctors a voice in health care decisions and to protect patient care.”
But even unionizing may not solve all the ills due to financialization of health care.
Just to give one example, even Congress has finally woken up to the role and profit skimming of one key group of so-called middlemen, pharmacy benefit managers. PBMs act in the name of the insurers, banning payment for certain procedures, including medications they keep off the list of so-called formularies.
That isn’t stopping SEIU and the doctors. It only makes them more determined.
The doctors will emphasize the heavy workloads they suffer—and the impact on patients—along with safety, staffing, workload and other problems,
They suffer “unsustainable patient loads, staffing shortages, administrative burdens” from the insurers and the pharmacy benefit managers, plus “burnout and the increasing corporatization of healthcare.’ Their vision for unionization is the opposite of that.
“As doctors, our working conditions are our patients’ care conditions. We are fed up with a corporatized healthcare system that leaves us powerless, overworked, and disrespected. We’re fighting to improve our healthcare system from the inside,” Dr. Hannah Spungen, an emergency medicine physician at UCLA, told SEIU.”
“It’s time to set our own priorities and advocate for ourselves, protect our colleagues, and provide the best care possible.”
Dollar-wise, they have an example right in front of them. SEIU’s Committee of Interns and Residents, whose tentative contract with the system would give them an 18% raise over its term, covering 6,500 workers. It also preserves fertility benefits, and erects defenses against ICE for both the practitioners and their patients—since the Trump regime now declares health care institutions no longer off-limits for its raids and sweeps across the country.
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