Resident doctors are not paid too little

Just what should we do about these resident doctors and their impertinent pay demands? First off, go back to calling them medical students. Then we’ll see how their demand to be in the top 10 per cent of the income curve plays with the public. 

Yes, resident doctors have qualifications, but they are still training, and never far from supervision. Forty grand a year — before overtime, weekends and nights — and up looks pretty good to most of us, especially as it’s en route to £100k and a million pound pension pot.

We might also remind ourselves that the entry levels of all professions have long been poorly paid. Those doing their articles as accountants or solicitors are not swimming in it — and it is only recently that a barrister stopped paying his master for the pupillage. 

But perhaps numbers are more important here? The students are insisting they are well below the wage levels of 2009. This leads to two numbery thoughts. 2009 was, of course, the last gasp of cash-splashing under the Brown Terror. Quite why students should, for all time, be paid what a desperate PM facing near certain electoral defeat was willing to offer is unknown. In fact, it’s unjustifiable. 

The other is that clearly wages are higher, in numbers, than 2009. But the claim is that inflation has risen faster, so their real wages are lower. Except they are using the Retail Price Index, RPI, as their inflation measure. Everyone else’s wages get measured by CPI, which runs about half a percent a year lower. Over the 16 years that is almost 10 per cent — including a bit of compounding — the students are claiming they are owed but only by their own, special, method of counting. We should not believe them on this. 

It’s even possible to find them claiming that “we’re getting less than in 2009” and the like which is, of course, piffle. People who were medical students in 2009 tend not, now, to be medical students. Medical training rarely lasts these 16 years. These are not the same people complaining now who were getting those higher wages then.

This is important. The wages which tempted today’s students into the game are those which applied in 2016 and 2017, when they first decided to go and read medicine. Which is what they expected to get when they started this path to becoming a doctor. As they themselves — the students — note, those wages are lower than those of 2009. They started that path to the profession knowing that wages were lower than they had been — they don’t now get to complain about the wages they knew they were going to get when they made their decision.

Well, of course they are so complaining but we shouldn’t listen.

It is even, if we must, possible to do a little economics. There is no such thing as a just and righteous wage. There’s simply that which is necessary to gain enough willing and competent hands. So, how tough are we finding it to gain doctors at today’s wage rates? 

To get in to read medicine — a near universal precursor — requires AAA and often enough A*A*A at A Level. That’s not evidence of having to scrape the barrel for the raw material and labour to be trained. This is before we get to having to actually gain the degree (not all do of course) and then a series of competitions to gain the varied training posts within the NHS. 

D’ya see, those first two pages of every economics textbook ever, the supply and demand curves, are correct? If we have an overflowing funnel of would-be doctors then we’re not paying medical students too little. We’re just not. 

In fact, this funnel overflows so much that there’s another demand from these very same students. That there should be more training jobs for students to become doctors. That is, the NHS doesn’t even bother to train all the potential doctors it has because it has enough doctors without training all of those medical students. 

In those economic terms, we can put it that we have an oversupply of would-be doctors — that oversupply now demanding they should all get paid more to boot. This isn’t how the world works. An oversupply is met by a cut in the price to be paid, not an increase. 

We have too many medical students chasing too few training opportunities

It’s that last point which gives us the correct policy here. We have too many medical students chasing too few training opportunities. Therefore cut what we pay medical students to thin out that crowd a bit. This isn’t being brutal at all. They are all at least AAA students, so other parts of the economy will be falling over themselves to employ people so bright and public spirited, empathic and service oriented. Right?

Britain has too many medical students, more than we can be bothered to finish training. The correct answer is to cut the pay of medical students so as to reduce the number applying. Don’t forget, you might be perfectly happy ignoring basic economics but that doesn’t mean that basic economics is going to ignore you.