Australia

where a local doctor had refused to treat an Aboriginal child without upfront payment

I wonder why he'd do that...🙄

Racism, and because you don't know anything more about the story - and yet you're making the same assumptions.. Welll.

The doctors claimed justification for turning them away is largely irrelevant anyway, as doctors cannot turn a patient away that is in dire medical need without ensuring the patient has alternative care options immediately available, eg: another doctor nearby. Telling them to fuck off to Perth 3 hours away is in breech.

That's really good now instead of not being able to help 1 person he can't help any, and it's not like there's a shortage of doctors or anything in regional Australia

GP shortage contributing to 'bidding war' as regional towns struggle to attract doctors

The story she's sharing is from when she was around 30. She's near 80 now. There was no shortage of rural doctors in the mid 1970s, so your complaint doesn't even make sense.

About 10 or so doctors get struck off the register every year (of 10,000 doctors in WA), and it's done by a thorough review process by the AHPRA. Its not like Fiona Stanley can just call a buddy and they're gone - a whole team of people had to review the case, hear the doctor's position in a hearing, and decide if the doctor had aggregiously failed in their duties and breached the code of conduct they'd agreed to uphold.

Discriminating doc can no longer get kids killed with negligence, and you take the position that the lady that helped flag the case for removal is "insufferable"? What a weird position to broadcast to the internet.

I disagree with the implication that a child should be left to die if the medical centre isn't paid. I know the doctors need to be paid and their work deserves to be compensated, I know medical centres need to have costly supplies to operate, of course, but the commodification of society's critical healthcare needs is an atrocity.

The author suggests it was the doctor's lack of care, but if there's some missing context that somehow justified their decision, it's still a damning insight into paid healthcare systems. Would distributing the cost of that treatment be more or less damaging than the cost of denying it?

one less doctor

On the other hand, if they're replaced with someone who doesn't let patients die like that, that's saving lives.

You fuckin wat? You never pay the doctor before treatment, this mercenary jackass deserved to be fired out of a cannon.