GP Bashing - Daily Mail style

I don't read the Daily Mail regularly but occasionally I get sent a interesting news articles by friends and colleagues. This time, I got sent the annual GP bashing article as the annual pay report is released, titled Rise of the £100k GPs. The actual financial report is published here. 

If you do a quick search on google regarding doctors and the Daily Mail, you get a whole series of articles that seemingly question the high wages doctors get, especially GPs. It briefly mentions the new information that has come out, that wages have increased from last year but also contrasting it negative news such as supposedly not seeing patients face to face, seeing people via 'zoom' (and supposedly missing serious diseases like cancer) and the difference between GP and nurses pay. They sum it up with a quote sticking it to GPs:

"The revelations about high GP pay will add to calls for doctors to justify their salaries by ensuring patients can easily access face-to-face appointments."

Who is calling for doctors to justify pay? Maybe the daily mail readers who comment. Whenever I get sent these articles, I skim the article, jump straight to the best and worst rated comments, then read the article properly. What I can glean from these comments (and subsequent up and down votes), is that most of the readers have quite a poor opinion of GPs at the moment. Below are the top 3 best-rated comments:

And here are the top 3 worst-rated comments:

Clearly a troll, they made themselves French, ethnic, lesbian and high-earning - definitely will be downvoted in the daily mail...

Brexit seems to be a reoccurring theme in the comments

It's hard to know which of these comments are serious or whether people just put them down knowing it will get up or down-voted. I personally don't find it too insulting as a GP, more entertaining but it is slightly sad that some people do feel this way without knowing how hard GPs have to work (especially during this month when everyone has gone on holiday and workload seems to have gone up tenfold).

In terms of the actual report, the only interesting bit I found was the real terms pay cut that partners and salaried doctors have had in the last 15 years. In 2006/2007, GP partners were paid £150,100 on average in today's money (adjusted for inflation) but last year in 2019/2020, they were paid £121,800 (please see below). This is a drop of 19%.

For salaried GPs, they were paid £69,500 on average in 2006/2007 in today's money (adjusted for inflation) and now on £63,600 in 2019/2020, a drop of 8.5% (see below). 

In any other private sector, people would have moved to a different company with this prolonged pay stagnation but GP's don't have that luxury. GP's (and other doctors) do have the ability to leave the country however, which many do, which is a bigger waste of taxpayer money but this will happen more if there are greener pastures abroad. 

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