NHS Pensions.........truth

Muscle750

Last night on the news it stated the reason now the local GP surgeries are struggling are because many GPs now are retiring early and because of the new pension rules are far better off taking the pension even thou on average they are on £90k a year. I realise that this is at the top end of the pay scale yet this will be accessible for all. The doctors are saying that its down to the workload also which i agree they are stretched however so are many others in their line of work.

Thrugelmir

Same as higher level NHS employees. Work is no longer enjoyable. Many of the patients do little to help either.

bigadaj

Muscle750 wrote: »

Last night on the news it stated the reason now the local GP surgeries are struggling are because many GPs now are retiring early and because of the new pension rules are far better off taking the pension even thou on average they are on £90k a year. I realise that this is at the top end of the pay scale yet this will be accessible for all. The doctors are saying that its down to the workload also which i agree they are stretched however so are many others in their line of work.

Depends on your and their views.

Doctors are high earners and may get caught up by the lifetime allowance at a relatively early age, the fact that most GPs are self employed makes this more of a pinch point.

Once you get to a certain level of income and can sustain an acceptable level in retirement then the appeal of work may diminish, as well as the marginal tax rate becoming very high.

No one can be forced to work it's all down to individual views and situations.

In some cases the outcomes can become perverse, a friend of mine from university became an actuary, went off on maternity leave and then proposed coming back part time. The company response was to offer more money which actually had the effect of making the choice to drop to three days from five that much easier.

Thrugelmir

bigadaj wrote: »

The company response was to offer more money which actually had the effect of making the choice to drop to three days from five that much easier.

Doubt if the workload reduced much though. Potentially far more productive from the Company's perspective. Also cost saving.

OldBeanz

Gordon Brown gave a deal to the doctors which gave them a humongous 50% pay rise and decoupled them from providing 24hr care. The BMA laughed all the way to the bank. Final salary pensions of the present retirement age group were set to provide 2/3rds of final pay so if we accept the £90k average it would make sense for most of them to retire or reduce their hours due to the restrictions on pension sizes. Agency work is also lucrative/out of control as well. The decoupling of 24hr responsibility for patients also means that the doctor does not get the job satisfaction of seeing his efforts improving the lives of his patients or the patient building a rapport with the doctor. They tried to restore the link to a GP in 2014/15 for older patients as each one was given a name but this was just a box ticking exercise as there was the caveat that the patient may not see that doctor.

bigadaj

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Doubt if the workload reduced much though. Potentially far more productive from the Company's perspective. Also cost saving.

She wasn't that busy in any case, it's often a function with highly qualified people with high demand and limited supply. Parental duties became more important, the job wasn't that important as the husband was a partner in an accountancy firm.

Flugelhorn

The GPs don't have a final salary scheme (unlike hospital doctors). Many breach the LTA and leave the scheme.

There are lots of reasons why GPs are quitting. One is the Indemnity costs which are ridiculous (mine is over 15K as I work quite a lot of time in out of hours service where the indemity rate is higher)

kidmugsy

OldBeanz wrote: »

Gordon Brown gave a deal to the doctors which gave them a humongous 50% pay rise and decoupled them from providing 24hr care. The BMA laughed all the way to the bank.

I'd forgotten that. Now you've reminded me, didn't the senior BMA negotiator later say that he couldn't believe how extravagant the offer had been? It led to such a huge pay rise that all the GPs were easily able to afford to give up the small payment for providing 24hr service.

But was Brown really to blame? Who was Sec State for Health?

Flugelhorn

I think it was 2004-5 so would have been John Reid.

the amount given up for not doing 24 hr care was about £6k

OldBeanz

Brown controlled the purse strings but Reid was a nutcase. His attitude to the smoking ban was "As my mother would put it, people from those lower socio-economic categories have very few pleasures in life and one of them they regard as smoking." The more you think back about the Blair years the more you realise.

hyubh

OldBeanz wrote: »

Reid was a nutcase. His attitude to the smoking ban was "As my mother would put it, people from those lower socio-economic categories have very few pleasures in life and one of them they regard as smoking." The more you think back about the Blair years the more you realise.

Reid in that quote was arguing against a national smoking ban (this was before it actually came in). In what way was he really wrong? For anyone currently under 40, smoking really was a matter of social class by the mid-90s, if not earlier.