24.The General Medical Council (GMC)

To practise medicine, doctors have to pay the GMC an annual fee, to remain on the Register. Only doctors who have no income from any source worldwide, including from pensions and investments, are exempt. But until now, no more payments were required after the age of 65, whether or not one engaged in gainful medical work. The GMC now claims, that the 2006 law against age discrimination prohibits them from exempting the over-65s.

So for the time being, the cunning lawyers and the greedy GMC councilors have actually been provided with a golden opportunity to rake in a great deal of extra money from elderly doctors.

In my opinion, the spirit of this law is intended to prevent older persons from being more disadvantaged, and not the reverse. To prove this and clarify the law would require very high and expensive legal authorities. I wonder: what about my old-age advantage of travelling free on London transport? And my exemption from prescription charges, and concessions on entrance tickets? Will all this be abolished now to avoid discrimination against the young?

The GMC should have changed their regulations in a different way to comply with the 2006 law - as interpreted by their lawyers. Instead of the exemption by age, which is now allegedly illegal, they could have introduced an exemption for those who do not engage in any gainful medical work, irrespective of age, and irrespective of non-medical income. But that would have demanded logical, intelligent and compassionate thinking by a body that is notorious for its archaic habits. Rumour has it, that they still use quill pens and are not particularly computer literate.

After I reached 65 and no longer had to pay my GMC fee, I did no gainful medical work of any kind. The only use that I made of my ongoing GMC registration was for private prescriptions for a short course of antibiotics for relatives of friends who visited from abroad. On several occasions I provided emergency help on airplanes or during meetings. Presumably all this will have to stop. When needed, my GP or a former colleague would write me a private prescription. To resume paying the annual GMC fee - currently £390 - just to allow me to perform these trivial actions is naturally out of the question.

I have my own personal bad experiences with the GMC.

When newspapers print a report that the GMC have 'struck off ' a delinquent doctor, their full personal particulars are always reported. But when these episodes are later reported in the GMC newsletter, they are left anonymous. No medical reader would be able to recognize such a culprit, if they were to seek work despite their ban and endanger more patients - it has happened. The GMC newsletter invites readers' comments - but my letters were totally ignored twice.
The GMC logo used to include the term 'protecting patients'. No more. They changed the motto to: 'Regulating doctors, ensuring good medical practice'. They should add 'ignoring doctors, endangering patients'.

When I arrived in Britain in 1962 my qualification, MD (Jerusalem), was registered by the GMC on my Temporary Registration. But as the medical school in Jerusalem was not interested in foreign accreditation and did not apply for it, my degree was not recognized by the GMC for full registration. I had to re-qualify. After making enquiries I chose to get the simplest 'recognized' qualification - from the Apothecaries' Hall in Dublin. The procedure was a farce - maybe I'll describe it in another blog - so I was not surprised to learn a few years later that the GMC had withdrawn its accreditation from the Apothecaries' Hall in Dublin. Nevertheless, my licence of LAH remained a 'kosher' degree. I ignored it when I provided my personal details: it was secondary to my original MD.

Imagine my surprise in 1996, when I was notified by the GMC that after 36 years they had decided to re-designate my qualifications. Henceforth I was no longer registered 'MD', only 'LAH'. I tried to reason and to protest, but the dinosaur refused to budge.
Later I passed the membership exam of the Royal college of physicians and was subsequently elected a fellow.

So as of this morning, sod the GMC registration:
I am still MD, FRCP.