When doctors go on strike, people stop dying. Every study ever done on it found the death rate either held steady or fell.
In January 1976 about half the doctors in Los Angeles County walked out for five weeks in a row over malpractice insurance. Emergency care continued, but operations that could wait did not happen. The county's death rate fell. When the doctors went back and the scheduled surgery started again, the deaths came back with it. One analysis counted around 90 more surgery-related deaths in the two weeks after the strike than in the same fortnight the year before.
In 1983, 8,000 of Jerusalem's 11,000 doctors went on strike for 17 weeks over pay. Deaths did not rise. When Israel's doctors struck again in 2000, the Jerusalem Post asked the burial societies, which handle most Israeli funerals, what was happening. One reported 93 funerals that May, against 153 the May before. Its director said the same thing had happened during the strike in 1983.
In 2008 researchers at Emory and McMaster gathered every study they could find on doctors' strikes: Los Angeles, Jerusalem twice, Spain and Croatia, lasting from nine days to 17 weeks. In every one, mortality stayed the same or went down, during the strike and sometimes after it. Their best explanation was that elective surgery stops. A large share of the risk in a modern hospital comes from the operations that were never urgent.
Nurses' strikes are a different story. When they walk out, hospital deaths go up.
Medicine counts the lives it saves. The strikes were the only time anyone got to count what it costs.
Mike
In January 1976 about half the doctors in Los Angeles County walked out for five weeks in a row over malpractice insurance. Emergency care continued, but operations that could wait did not happen. The county's death rate fell. When the doctors went back and the scheduled surgery started again, the deaths came back with it. One analysis counted around 90 more surgery-related deaths in the two weeks after the strike than in the same fortnight the year before.
In 1983, 8,000 of Jerusalem's 11,000 doctors went on strike for 17 weeks over pay. Deaths did not rise. When Israel's doctors struck again in 2000, the Jerusalem Post asked the burial societies, which handle most Israeli funerals, what was happening. One reported 93 funerals that May, against 153 the May before. Its director said the same thing had happened during the strike in 1983.
In 2008 researchers at Emory and McMaster gathered every study they could find on doctors' strikes: Los Angeles, Jerusalem twice, Spain and Croatia, lasting from nine days to 17 weeks. In every one, mortality stayed the same or went down, during the strike and sometimes after it. Their best explanation was that elective surgery stops. A large share of the risk in a modern hospital comes from the operations that were never urgent.
Nurses' strikes are a different story. When they walk out, hospital deaths go up.
Medicine counts the lives it saves. The strikes were the only time anyone got to count what it costs.
Mike
