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The Ramsay group is offering for the first time in France a monthly subscription at 11.99 euros to consult a doctor at any time. Good idea or symbol of a system that is going badly? Response from Dr Fabien Quédeville, general practitioner.
A price of 11.90 euros per month (and per person)! This is the subscription offered by the Ramsay group, number one in private care, to consult a doctor 24 hours a day, 7 days a week if necessary. A care offer modeled on Netflix or Prime Video subscriptions, but which concerns for the first time… our health.
A new idea of the medical offer
On his site, Ramsay details the advantage of his subscription called “24/7”: “With a subscription at 11.90 euros per month, you can teleconsult a doctor whenever you need, all costs included”. Once the subscription has been taken out, no additional cost and no fee-for-service billing seems to be requested. “All your teleconsultations are included in your monthly plan”, specifies the site. In detail, once the subscription has been taken out, the teleconsultation with the doctor is done by telephone or video, and the medical documents are sent by email and accessible via a secure link.
The group thus provides access to general practitioners, gynecologists, psychiatrists, pediatricians, pharmacists and nurses all “graduates in France and registered with the Council of the Order of Physicians or the order of their profession“according to the site, for a maximum of 20 teleconsultations per year.
Do we have to pay to have access to care?
Ramsay’s announcement hits hard, and seems to take advantage of the breach offered by the lack of attending physicians that exists in France. But several voices are already opposed to its operation. Already on the subscription system. “Do we have to pay to have access to care? The multinational Ramsay unveils a very special subscription for access to video consultations. An unprecedented attack on equality in healthcare” the collective protests Our public services. At 11.90 euros per month, the subscription will therefore cost per person 142.80 euros per year, 571 euros per year for a family of 4 people. And if the medical teleconsultations offered by this type of platform are reimbursed by Health Insurance, the subscription itself remains the responsibility of the customer.
For the union of young general practitioners ReAGJIR, this proposal for the uberization of medicine is also absurd: “This company sends the message to everyone that quality care costs almost nothing and denies the cruel lack of doctors that we know by promising an illusory easy access.
“Let’s no longer call it care, but trade”
Consulted by Doctissimo, Dr. Fabien Quedeville tells us about his weariness about what can be called an “uberization of society”.
“Whatever the field, we level down. At 11.99 euros for unlimited teleconsultation, this means that these doctors, whose training or who they are we do not know, will be underpaid. Result: it is no longer called care, but trade, you have to be aware of that”
But the doctor does not put everything on the back of the Ramsay group, which invites itself into the debate on access to care, for a good reason.
“If society is offering this, there must be a strong demand and too many people who do not have access to care. On the one hand, we have an increasingly anxious society, which intends to consume care; and on the other hand, general practitioners who are less and less available because they have to manage a whole host of things that are no longer a matter of care. Let’s rethink care in a relevant way, like what we can provide to patients. It’s urgent !”.