[Reporter’s View] Patients are left to suffer amid dispute

Doctor-government conflict continues while the National Assembly is indifferent

It has been 3 months since the doctors and the government failed to see eye to eye on the government’s plan to expand medical school admissions by 2,000 students.

 

The prolonged dispute has intensified animosity towards each other.

 

The doctors have criticized the Minister and Vice Minister of Health and Welfare, Kyoo-hong Cho and Minsoo Park for their absurd remarks and called for their resignation, and even called for the resignation of the administration itself ahead of the general elections.

 

The presidential office and the government condemned the act as a "cartel of interests" by doctors who were only worried about protecting their own interests and chose to enforce the policy instead of seeking further communications.

 

Amid the patients’ deepening grievance and suffering, the doctors and the government continued to fight without retreat, and the ruling and opposition parties that were intent on winning the 22nd general election held an indifferent eye to the issue at hand.

 

Three weeks have passed since the general elections, but there is no sign of the ruling and opposition parties planning to discuss or resolve the doctor-government conflict at the National Assembly level.

 

The 21st National Assembly and the 22nd National Assembly are both sitting on the sidelines as the former is nearing the end of its term, and the latter is yet to start its term.

 

Maybe the medical gap, as well as the grievances and fear felt by the neglected patients, do not seem so urgent or serious to the National Assembly.

 

Doctors and the government are continuing to repeat their own explanations for why they are unable to engage in a dialog.

 

At this rate, it's easy to assume that the two will continue to spew the same slanderous messages day after day.

 

The Special Presidential Committee on Healthcare Reform, despite being "operated directly under the president," convened on the 25th without a doctor.

 

This is like operating a vehicle with its doors open, which is illegal under the current Road Traffic Act and falls under the 12 acts of gross negligence according to the Act on Special Cases Concerning The Settlement Of Traffic Accidents.

 

In this sense, the doctors who did not participate and the government who started without closing its doors are both guilty of gross negligence.

 

The Special Presidential Committee on Healthcare Reform that convened without doctors will discuss policies to strengthen local and essential healthcare without reflecting the voices in the medical field without knowing whether the medical community would accept them.

 

This increases the probability of establishing an impractical healthcare policy that is nothing more than rhetoric.

 

Patients are suffering amid the endless doctor-government conflicts, parliamentary indifference, and the shaky launch of the healthcare reform task force.

 

The patient’s pain and suffering will only grow greater if the conflict continues.

 

When a child's temperature rises greatly at night, or a child's skin is scratched and torn by a laceration one day, or the condition of an elderly patient hospitalized in a nursing home suddenly deteriorates due to illness, patients and their caregivers have to experience the dreaded medical crisis.

 

They come face-to-face with the 'emergency room rush' they've only seen in the news.

 

The negative effects of the doctor-government conflicts are not limited to emergency and serious illnesses.

 

Patients and their caregivers who are unable to receive a timely diagnosis on whether their bleeding abrasion is minor or serious are left to suffer their injury in pain in addition to medical confusion.

 

Moreover, patients who receive some abnormal findings in medical health screenings are unable to visit a higher-level hospital at their desired time for further diagnosis because the medical system, except for emergency and severe cases, has been shut down.

 

There's no telling what diseases that have slipped through the cracks will quickly take hold and eat away at the patients' lives.

 

Doctors and the government need to stop their needless arguments and start tending to the patients.

 

They should sincerely listen to each other's arguments and try to understand the underlying implications.

 

The doctors need to decide to get back to the front lines of medicine and get to work on crafting a unified government-to-physician deal of their desire, including the size of the medical school expansions.

 

Rather than just calling for a return to the drawing board, the doctors should participate in closed-door meetings and the health reform task force to exchange negotiation cards with the government.

 

The government should also prepare a proposal that can motivate doctors to stop their collective action and return to the field.

 

The government has conceded a point, transitioning next year’s admission quota to voluntary expansions, but it should be willing to yield further to open the dialogue.

 

This is all for the sake of the patients.

 

Our patients can't afford to wait any longer.

 

Why should the patients be terrorized and sacrificed in a battle between the doctors and the government?

 

It's time for the parties to end their ego games and deferral of responsibilities and start creating a medical normalization plan to resolve the conflict proactively.

 

The National Assembly should also make a bipartisan move to end the conflict and bring about reconciliation.

 

It is the raison d'être and duty of the National Assembly to reconcile conflicts between stakeholders over national policies, both large and small, and lead them to rational administration and national affairs.

 

We hope that the 21st National Assembly leads the two parties to reach a consensus before the end of its term for ‘one last hurrah.’