Belgium: Rx: Strike

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For three hours, a hemorrhaging pregnant Antwerp housewife with four children waited for an ambulance to take her to the hospital. Before it arrived, she died. In Louvain, a four-year-old girl suffocated to death while her parents tried for an hour and a half to summon medical assistance. All over Belgium last week, the sick and the dying similarly went without medical attention, except—when it could be provided—in dire emergencies. The reason was a crippling doctors' strike in which 85% of the nation's 12,000 physicians and dentists closed their offices.

Cause of the strike was a new government law that pegged fixed medical fees under the national health insurance scheme at approximately half the prevailing rate, also extended free care to widows, orphans, the aged, and chronic invalids. Charging that the law was the first step toward socialized medicine, doctors demanded that the government raise fees by about 50% and asked for free time to treat private patients under a separate price structure. When all mediation attempts failed, the doctors hung up their stethoscopes and walked out.

Hundreds of striking medics streamed across Belgium's borders for "extended vacations" in neighboring Luxembourg, France and Germany. Those who stayed home left their phones off the hook or linked them to tape recordings that informed callers where emergency service was available. Skeleton crews of doctors at central exchanges diagnosed ailments and prescribed treatment over the phone. Military hospitals also opened their wards to civilians, while corporation doctors, few of whom joined the strikers, doubled up in overcrowded hospitals and clinics.

Throughout Belgium, thousands of workers staged angry, anti-doctor demonstrations. The government empowered local authorities to draft medics in emergencies. But the doctors were not easily intimidated. Said bearded Dr. Andre Wijnen, leader of the strike: "We must continue our action until the law is revoked."