OK a lot of truth and a lot of rubbish spouted above. You get what you pay for. I have only 2nd hand knowledge from my bother, sister, FIL, and BIL who have been at GP and consultant and surgeon level. These are people who are very talented and very educated and that is what you want when you are ill. We need to realise this and accept we have to pay for this. A talented (sp) GP I knew who was really good and dedicated just decided to move into IT land.

Nail on head. Which is why I'm not striking. Given the choice, I'd prefer action to disrupt the health reforms rather than strike.

Meaningless / irrelevant / highly misleading- you might like to read my post a few pages back that explains why this is bks!

Presumably salaries in the other sectors are lower so the pension needs to compensate?

68 is the age when the full maximum pension would be payable - if doctors want to retire early then they should be able to do so with appropriate actuarial reductions to their benefits.

Sidicks

The thing is, in the USA, really great Doctors do really well. They get paid as much as people are willing to pay them (or rather in most cases, the Insurance company) times the number of patients they see. On the other hand, less great Doctors earn far more ordinary levels of pay. And the ones that make mistakes can lose their livelihoods by civil lawsuits. I get to choose which Doctor I see - I choose the best I can afford and I don't get a lecture about ruining the environment by driving 60 miles to see the exact specialist I want to see. It is true payment for performance.
This is no different to anybody in industry. The world is changing and realising the final salary public and private sector pensions were financially unsustainable. Western countries' salaries need to be fixed to make jobs sustainable. This in turn requires the public sector to track this.

A strike would give the NHS an ideal opportunity to see what is absolutely critical essential and what isn't, a precursor for a severe downsizing of the NHS's scope and the potential imposition of pay cuts. This may not have a great ending.

No no these are nice wealthy people, the others were nasty wealthy people

I don't blame Doctors for wanting the pension they have been promised. They've done well at school got into hard courses at university and slaved away whilst most people were pissing it up for four years. Then they've worked hard doing antisocial hours dealing with the sick/drunk/malingering/public and all that entails in hospitals for a while before they got to where they are today. It's a hard job done by people who have worked hard and achieved something with their lives.

It's easy for everyone to make out Doctors are grasping or out of touch just because they apparently have an OK pension. Plenty of private sector workers have much better pensions that a GP does, mine isn't much different and I haven't achieved half of what a Doctor has to to reach their position. I don't think their demands are unreasonable at all. The trouble about having the tax payer funding your pension pot is that chippy people on the internet think they somehow own you or have some kind of right to decide how your pension should be paid.

And you really think that is where you will be when you are 68?

Undoubtedly...hence my angst.
Have trouble enough already recruiting to my particular specialty (except in the States) and it is only going to get worse.
Still you get what you pay for......now I'm definitely out.

You are probably too young for me to still be around when you are 68 but it will be interesting to see if your dire predictions comes true.

And even if it does, maybe you will WANT to be working at 68. The notion that everyone is tired and washed up and useless to society and prone to mistakes and errors by the time they get to 65 is rapidly being disabused. Many more of us see ourselves being productive, alert and making a decent economical contribution to society and one's self beyond the age of 70.

In my mind, this is a GOOD thing - not a bad thing.

As a doctor, are you implying that those of 68 and over are somehow less valuable to society?

If so, does this affect your atitude to how you approach their health issues?

Totally agreed. I come from a "real men don't cry" type family but I saw my brother in tears after having been working on a woman for hours from a pedestrian vs car accident where they didn't manage to save her. He was trying to sort out her shattered head whilst another team were trying to sort out thoracic damage. Another relative, retired now, was an oncology (cancer) consultant and that has taken its toll. He really cared about his patients, even now some send him presents at Christmas. He would rush in even if not on call. However the nature of his work meant that a lot of the time all he could do was alleviate the pain and watch them slowly die. He's pretty much an emotional wreck these days - anything even slightly emotional will cause tears.

So in summary, yes Doctors are special. Not just only Doctors but compare the required qualifications, the training period and the life & death stress then they are apart from even nurses and police who are up there too.