Some health care workers more essential than others

We've heard a lot of talk over the past ten months about our woefully inadequate standard of care in long term care homes. Many commentators and several official reports have noted the many ways in which we dropped the ball on eldercare in the "first wave." 

The result of that hand-wringing and soul searching has been... absolutely nothing! We're repeating the same mistakes now that we're in the midst of the "second wave" eight months later. Part-time PSW staff still attend to clusters of patients in multiple facilities. Many residents remain in dormitory housing. LTC homes still account for the overwhelming majority of deaths.

I would like to see some research into how efficiently health care resources are employed. We spend a lot of money on health care, but are we spending it in the right places? The ranks of health care workers resemble a caste system. At the Dalit end of the spectrum, you've got your personal support workers (PSWs). At the Brahmin end, you've got folks like Dr. Tom Stewart.

The median wage for PSWs in Ontario is $18/hr. About 40% of all PSWs are part-time with no benefits. These are the people who stitch together multiple part-time jobs in order to make ends meet, thereby carrying the virus from one facility to the next. This is still happening today, ten months into the pandemic.

Generally speaking, PSWs are socio-economically among the working poor. As such, at least we know they'll be on the job, and not lying on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean. The working poor have neither time nor disposable income for Caribbean vacations.

The Brahmins, on the other hand, are showered with cash. Very few PSWs make in a year what Dr. Stewart makes in a month. His annual salary of $630,000 would pay for at least twenty full-time PSWs.  (Or perhaps ten if they were properly compensated.)

Here's a modest suggestion. Health care systems are far more dependent on the Dalits than the Brahmins, especially when the Brahmin is backed up by a phalanx of Brahmin-in-training also making six-number pay packets. Why can't we cut back on the number of Brahmins, and their compensation, and provide more resources where they're truly needed?