the liberal doctors resume the strike and their demonstrations

Closure of practices, strike by SOS Médecins and demonstration between the ministry and the Senate: liberal doctors have pulled out all the stops. This series of actions which says a lot about the state of relations, first and foremost with Health Insurance. Two weeks before the end of crucial negotiations for the profession, failure has never seemed so likely.

After three months without revealing itself, the proposal for an increase of barely 1.50 euros in the basic consultation – from 25 to 26.50 euros – was experienced as “ a provocation “. Far, very far from the 50 euros demanded by the Doctors for Tomorrow collective, at the origin of previous cabinet closures in early December and during the Holidays, with the support of protesting unions (UFML, FMF). Even large organizations (MG France, CSMF), whose signature will be essential, do not expect less than 30 euros.

Not without compensation

Will this slingshot move the lines? ” We will go further next week “, already promises the director of Health Insurance, Thomas Fatôme, in an interview with the Doctor’s Daily. But it will not be without consideration. A ” territorial commitment is requested, so that practitioners take on more patients and provide more call duty in the evenings and weekends.

What practitioners do not like. ” The younger ones I receive want more time for their family – and rightly so – for leisure. Doctors want exactly the same. I have friends, boys or girls, who want to pick up their child at school at 6 p.m. The end of the story, it’s true that it costs a lot of money, but for me, there is nothing more important than health, education and safety “, assures Dr. Romain Thévenoud, deputy secretary of the Order of Doctors of Côte d’Or, at the microphone of RFI.

The Minister of Health, François Braun, does not budge: ” My goal is to meet the health needs of the population “, he affirms, saying to hear “ anger “practitioners,” but also that of the French who cannot find a doctor “. It is precisely because supply does not meet demand that Parliament plans to open ” direct access – without medical prescription – to certain paramedics: physiotherapists, speech therapists and advanced practice nurses.

“Free up medical time”

A bill, supported if not inspired by the executive, has thus passed the stage of the Assembly and will be debated Tuesday afternoon in the Senate, after a passage in committee which did not distort its content. Despite everything, Minister Braun defends a supposed reform promote coordinated exercise “between caregivers and so” free up medical timeI “. Worried about a possible adoption of the text, the unions will at the same time play their all-out in the streets of the capital, between the place Vauban, close to the ministry, and that of the Pantheon, very close to the upper house.

At the beginning of January, on the reverse route, they had managed to gather between 2,300 and 4,000 demonstrators. Tuesday, some doctors will disengage for the first time. ” It’s the first day my office will be closed, I’ve never been on strike before in my life, says Dr. Elise Fraih. This is a great first! “.

The president of the Autonomous Grouping of Young General Practitioners installed and replacements union assures her: she felt the solidarity and understanding of her patients. ” I was printing posters to explain my approach to them. Many have asked me when we get a raise. By probing them, they told me that they did not find it normal. It shows that the separation that seeks to be made between doctors and patients is very artificial. They realize that we are not enough and that we work in tight flow “.

► Read also: In France, patients in solidarity with the doctors’ strike

(And with AFP)