This news can be taken two ways:

Almost half of family doctors have broken through the £100,000 pay barrier, said a survey published yesterday.

In the year after the new GP contract was introduced
average annual earnings rose 15 per cent and those earning more than
£100,000 went up from 23 per cent in 2003 to 43 per cent in 2004.

The number of GPs earning more than £150,000 rose from three per cent to six per cent.

The
Association of Independent Specialist Medical Accountants (AISMA) said
in its report that it expects earnings this year to rise by another 11
per cent to an average of more than £100,000.

The
association is made up of 67 accountancy firms specialising in general
practice. It sampled 14 per cent of all GPs in England, Scotland and
Wales, a total of 4,736 doctors representing 11.2 per cent of all
practices.

In 2002-03 GPs’ earnings averaged about £86,900.

View 1: GPs were underpaid before and their getting better wages will lead to more committment and thus better health care.
(It might be worth noting that those very rich people that the Lib Dems want to pay higher taxes will next year include 50% of all GPs.)

View 2: No wonder the surge of money into the NHS is not producing much result, it is simply sluicing out again in the form of higher wages.

There are others available as well I suppose. If there was a shortage of GPs then the higher wages will attract more to train for the job…so in about 7 years we might see more young GPs, assuming the Universities have the places to train them. Perhaps it is simply right that doctors should earn more. Maybe the rise has been bought by a change in working pratices, more efficiency, meaning that while individuals are earning more, each unit of health care is actually cheaper…although that would mean productivity is rising, which doesn’t appear to be the case in the NHS in general (cue the Baumol Effect).

Something for every prejudice then.