Hitler had many bunkers and also travelled on a special train, yet another Nazi, Count Claus von Stauffenberg, whom the Germans are now recasting as a hero, still came close to blowing him up. Only close, because the criminal survived. The well-known expression Führerbunker (eng. Hitler’s bunker) refers to his final residence in Berlin, where he is believed to have committed suicide together with Eva Braun. It is symbolic not only as a place, but also as a description of a particular psychological state.
Toward the end of his life, Hitler issued numerous insane orders. Many of the decisions most detached from reality were made in his bunker. The more difficult the situation became, the more frequently he resorted to absurd measures: moving divisions that did not exist, defending supply routes that the enemy had long since captured, and so on. The only thing he remained good at was eliminating close associates whom he suspected of disloyalty.
The expression Führerbunker became synonymous with the irrationality of a government approaching its collapse.
Watching our home-grown despot manage the country, and particularly his own political camp, I have the impression that we are approaching the point at which the irrationality of his decisions becomes entirely consistent with the prospect of complete collapse. Instead of dismissing Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński, discredited by the government’s handling of the floods, the appointment of a police chief detached from both basic principles and common sense, the Southern Hospital scandal, and so on, Tusk has decided to shift the blame for these disasters onto doctors.
It is a fact that Dawid Kacprzyk somehow managed to become a doctor and earned more than a bank CEO, while apparently being in several places at once and possibly performing medical procedures in breach of established protocols, which may have contributed to patients’ deaths. The problem is that his conduct did not result from the fact that he was a doctor, but from the fact that he was a politician in a country where those in power guarantee impunity to their own people. This, however, cannot be admitted, because those in government are supposedly, and must continue to be presented as, excellent.
The latest proposals to restrict earnings in healthcare are an attempt to find a convenient scapegoat and appeal to base emotions. Indeed, specialist doctors can sometimes earn as much as PLN 400 an hour. That is a lot, but should we really pay them less? First, most of them do not earn that much. Second, payment should be made only for actual work and genuine qualifications. Bilocation belongs to an entirely different field.
A good lawyer in Poland earns several hundred PLN an hour, and nobody considers that excessive. How is a cardiac surgeon different from a lawyer? I can assure you that becoming the former is considerably more difficult. Nor does anyone seem outraged when yet another aunt, mistress, or lover of a well-known politician is handed a lucrative position. Calculated per hour of actual work, such people often earn considerably more. In those cases, with all due respect, the only qualification required is having powerful connections, or at least an attractively shaped rear.
Perhaps doctors should be forced to treat their profession as a public service mission. By all means, but then we will either receive treatment in the private healthcare system or seek out our own doctors abroad. I naturally remember the system of “mission-driven doctors” from the 1990s. Its perfect symbol was Senate Marshal Tomasz Grodzki. As it later turned out, however, that particular mission cost patients even more.
Several reforms would make sense, but they would have to include, for example, ensuring that heads of hospital departments remain committed to the wards they manage. That can only be achieved through salary increases. When a department head receives only several thousand PLN for managing something as complex as a hospital ward, no one should be surprised that money leaks out of the system. Forcing department heads into networks of relationships with private businesses is the quickest way to ensure that hospitals are left without sufficient funds.
Naturally, an efficient electronic reimbursement system would also reduce the fraud that occurs all too frequently. Tusk, however, is pushing a policy of crude pay levelling. Politically, this benefits the opposition because a professional community known for its liberal and left-wing views will turn against him. The problem is that, in “Tusk’s bunker,” the victims will not be limited to commanders and doctors. Ultimately, it is the patients who will suffer the most.