Playboy doctors are unaware of the existence of Hippocrates.

Hippocratic Oath

"I promise that, in practicing the art of healing, I will always show myself faithful to the precepts of honesty, charity, and science. Entering into homes, my eyes will be blind, my tongue will remain silent about the secrets revealed to me, which I will consider a precept of honor. I will never use my profession to corrupt morals or favor crime. If I fulfill this oath faithfully, may I forever enjoy my life and my art with a good reputation among men; if I break it or deviate from it, may the opposite befall me."

Everyone knows, even the very old, newborns, and kindergarteners, that a large number of doctors work multiple jobs and also own private practices. Many healthcare professionals work in the public sector because they know that job security is always an asset in life; after all, we know that life is hard. In short, the struggle for survival is real, which is why most parents, whenever possible, advise their children to take life seriously and, consequently, have fewer reasons to regret what they missed out on due to the difficulties that arise throughout their lives.

It turns out that everyone knows that thousands of doctors are also responsible for the health crisis because they have no commitment to society, much less to the Hippocratic Oath, which is a profound and fundamental teaching about the medical profession, which must be practiced as a vocation and not merely as a means to obtain profits and dividends, as is observed in Brazil.

Our country has become a place where doctors undeniably dedicate themselves to their private businesses, pleasures, and economic and financial interests, to the point of irresponsibly abandoning their duties in public service to go directly to their private practices, earn money, and treat the privileged who can afford high prices to be treated by these essentially capitalist professionals. These professionals serve as an example or symbol of an economically globalized and, contradictorily, selfish world, excessively consumerist because it is built on an individualism that opposes the historical essence of the human soul, which has always been based for millennia on solidarity, for associative, community, and, above all, survival reasons.

Behold, the rich girls and boys dressed in white — the playboy doctors — with the support of the Medical Councils, both regionally and federally, take to the streets with the unequivocal intention of preventing the Federal Government from addressing one of the demands of the June protests, which is to ensure that medical care reaches the peripheries, the poorest communities in large and medium-sized cities, where millions of Brazilians live, as well as for their presence to become part of the landscape of the Brazilian hinterland, whose inhabitants have difficulty accessing public health services due to a lack of doctors.

Clearly, the federal, state, and municipal governments must provide the necessary structural conditions (equipment, tools, and logistics) for doctors, nurses, nursing assistants, and administrative staff in hospital units. Period. However, without generalizing, we also know that the medical profession gives the impression of being divorced from the interests and needs of the Brazilian people and practices the profession with an arrogant, prejudiced, and elitist classist attitude, as demonstrated beyond any doubt by the statements of certain protesters and classist leaders to private business media outlets.

The struggle undertaken by doctors, and especially by the representatives of this class—true barons of medicine—is lamentable. The protests against the Workers' Party government's program known as "Mais Médicos" (More Doctors) undoubtedly demonstrate that a large part of Brazilian doctors are not concerned with improving healthcare, infrastructure, or service. These doctors show how uncommitted they are to the Brazilian nation. The current realities of the healthcare sector are good and adequate for these individuals, not for the people. Doctors control and want to continue controlling the job market, the money circulating in the sector, and are allied with multinational laboratories. They are entrenched in private healthcare units and have as spokespeople for the professional class the doctors who control the Federal Council of Medicine.

The posters, banners, and slogans of the doctors marching in the streets across Brazil are filled with authoritarian, intolerant, prejudiced, and opportunistic pronouncements. They are nihilistic beings in their very essence, because they, like the fierce, right-wing children of the middle class who flooded the streets in June, also call themselves "non-partisan" and "apolitical." However, those in white coats do not relinquish their privileges and, because of them, fight to keep them intact, because what is at stake is control of the big business that is medicine, from which they profit.

This is why, and because of this, they refuse to go to the interior or the outskirts of cities, while boycotting and sabotaging the "More Doctors" program and playing dumb, claiming that only infrastructure and logistics are lacking, when the truth is that there is also a shortage of doctors. These playboy doctors want to profit from all sides, through private initiatives as well as the public sector. But to profit in the private sector, they have to clock in at public health units. And they do so routinely, habitually, and repeatedly.

They simply clock in and leave, with the goal of seeing patients in their private practices or private hospital units, which, incidentally, charge very high prices and provide very poor service. In short: many doctors hired through competitive exams or contracted through outsourcing who work in the public hospital system solemnly abandon their jobs and go to earn money in the private sector. At the end of the month, they receive the salary paid by the Brazilian taxpayer in their bank accounts. This behavior is "normal" in the field, often even with the complicity of the directors and administrators of the public health units where these playboy doctors work.

This is opportunism in all its fullness, indelibly displaying its sordid and infamous nature, with the support of the coup-mongering press, which is essentially market-driven. Today on "Mau Dia Brasil" on Rede Globo, presenters Renata Vasconcellos and Chico Pinheiro sang praises to the petty protests of the playboy doctors. Not satisfied, the journalists from this public communication concessionaire "interviewed" a patient who said he was satisfied with the medical care, as well as "interviewing" a pedestrian or passerby who told the reporter, who was practicing true gutter journalism, that he supported the doctors' demonstrations.

And why did the reporter give voice to a person "satisfied" with the SUS (Brazilian public healthcare system) while another citizen said he "supports" the doctors' protests? My answer: these are cases of journalistic pyrotechnics and contortionism. The alien and corporate press opposes the Labor government; and any social movement that might favor the opposition is embraced by the press, which quickly digests the dissent in favor of its own interests, which generally aim at the elections, as well as helping to dismantle the Labor government that has held power in the Republic since 2003.

It's the first time in years that I've been surprised by employees of the Marinho family "praising," through a patient, the care provided by the SUS (Brazilian public healthcare system). I was also equally surprised by the support of an ordinary citizen for the marches of the playboy doctors, who don't want to go to the outskirts and the interior, but nevertheless, in a presumptuous and arrogant way, want to prevent the hiring of foreign doctors and end the "Mais Médicos" (More Doctors) program of the Labor government, in addition to refusing to work for two years for the SUS at the end of their courses, because for the "rich kids" and "posh girls" in white coats, working in public health at a young age is "slavery," which, certainly, their older medical colleagues disagree with, because they clock in at the public service and minutes later leave work to attend to their private patients.

The truth is this: the "Bad Morning Brazil" program and its "anchors" support the shamelessness and senselessness of the doctors. To appease the public, the morning news program needed to downplay the absence of thousands of healthcare professionals from their posts, and quickly proceeded to praise what they never praised before: the service provided by the Unified Health System (SUS), through a patient who said he was even surprised by the good service. Something like this: the playboy doctors are absent and go to the streets to protest, but the service hasn't gotten worse because of it. On the contrary, it's even improved. Sleep on that. The playboy doctors are unaware of the existence of Hippocrates. That's it.