No, doctors know that people are poor - they see it in their surgery, but many don't relate to it. They are ordinary people but ones whose minds revolve round their own job and the NHS. Very few of them have worked outside their own profession or understand what it's really like to lose a job or claim benefits. They complain that people don't keep appointments but conveniently forget that they don't run to time either and some people have just as tight a schedule in their own working lives.
Mirry, I wasn't going to post on this thread again, but really feel need to reply to your previous 2 posts.
I have mentioned previously, my DH and his 6 partners work in one of the most deprived area in the whole of the UK - the entire city is very socio-economically well below the UK average and the his practice covers an area of extreme deprivation - education levels are low, employment low, high level of substance addiction, violence, early death.
The Dr's are very aware of the circimstances these patients find themselves in, and a great deal of time is spent trying to DO things about it - the grinding hopelessness of this is something that affects GP's deeply - it's the reason why GP's have an appallingly high suicide rate compared with other branches of Medicine (where it's easier to "shut off" from your patients problems as you see them only once or twice).
The real soul destroying cases are the ones who attend their GP very frequently with complex multiple problems - often related to the patients social circimstances, where try as they might, there is only so much the GP can actually change.
But they are in the situation where they are priest/confessor as well as Dr - if your GP is running late it is likely to be because some other patient is having a crisis and the GP thinks it needs dealing with there and then. Should the GP tell the patient in severe crisis to come back tomorrow rather than have the surgery run late? It is not unusual for my DH to have people come in for a 10min appointment and have a crisis situation reveal itself (ranging from people completely breaking down (quite common) to people trying to assault, hold hostage and on one occasion, pull a knife from his pocket and tell my DH "this is not a threat, but I think I'm going to kill someone" ).
Sometimes, you being an hour late for your appointment is the least of the Dr's worries. I think a lot of working/healthy people attending their GP for fairly routine matters have little conception of how involved the GP is in the lives of particularly needy and vulnerable patients and families, how much time this takes or how draining it is mentally (sometimes because they can only listen, and not do much - they can't conjure up a job our of thin air or bring a dead relative back to life, or get rid of a terminal cancer).
Re prescription charges - most people don't pay, certainly the poorest in society don't. If you do pay, and need regular medications, prepayment cards can be bought which greatly reduces what you have to pay.
DH greatly resents this comment -
I really don't think many doctors realise how much people are struggling financially. We have people being made redundant, rising unemployment and young people leaving school and university unable to find a job. It really is a slap in the face when doctors complain about their pension arrangements and try to justify their £50000 odd a year pensions and £80000 and upward salary when some people can't find the money to pay for their £14 prescription. This industrial action will not endear them to the vast majority of people. But hell, they have a right to strike.They may believe themselves to have brains the size of the planet but they are living in their own private bubble.
He resents it because a huge number of his consultations are the direct or indirect result of redundancy, poverty, unemployment and the awful grinding social and economic and health problems which happen when you have generation after generation of people blighted by these issues.
DH may indeed have a brain the size of a planet 
but he is not living in a private bubble, he is working in close contact with these people, trying to improve their lives and redress some the the health inequalities that exist between different sectors of society.
I am bowing out now.