Legislative: what do the different blocs propose about health?

Since the European elections and the dissolution of the National Assembly, political life has been in turmoil. In its sights, the legislative elections which will take place in just a few days. Too short a time frame to design a defined program, each opposition bloc refines its proposals and lets the most impactful ones filter through. But when it comes to health, what are the priorities? Florent Chapel and Aurélien Demarthe, general director and consultant analyst at Akkanto France, give us their analysis.

New Popular Front: a program refocused around a major health law

According to the column published on the subject by Akkanto, the “legislative contract” of the member parties of the New Popular Front was published last Friday and makes health an important subject. “Unsurprisingly, a number of measures from the 2022 NUPES are taken up by this new attempt to unite the left.

• An industrial reconstruction plan always includes, for example, the pharmaceutical industry, the lifting of patents on vaccines and other medical means of fighting pandemics, or even the reimbursement of health sport, sport on prescription;
• The coalition also wants a major health law.with the aim of beginning the reconstruction of one of the two most crucial public services, with education. This law plans to regulate the installation of doctors in medical deserts, to define a multi-year plan for recruitment and upgrading in the care and medico-social professions and to condition the opening of private clinics on the permanence of care and the guarantee of zero remaining charges.
• The left also wants to create a “public drug center. In terms of disability, the NFP proposes to raise the Disabled Autonomy Allowance (AAH) to the level of the minimum wage and create a public support service for students with disabilities.

National gathering: measures faithful to the 2022 program

Health is also one of the 8 priorities supported by the National Rally, broken down into 3 main objectives: reducing medical deserts, supporting the public hospital and securing the supply of medicines.

• The fight against medical deserts is also one of the main points of their campaign, just like in 2022. Their proposal revolves around modulating remuneration according to the location of installation, increasing the number of houses and centers of health, to open more places in medical faculties.
• The RN also intends to support the public hospital by opening additional positions. On the other hand, on an organizational level, the RN demands a ceiling of 10% of administrative positions in hospitals and to eliminate the ARS, responsible for creating a “bureaucratic vice” according to him ;
• Finally, the National Rally is historically attached to the transformation of the AME, State Medical Aid, a system of free care for foreigners in an irregular situation whom it accuses of acting “like a call of air” to immigration. Its deletion was, however, modified by the word “transformation”. “A change in semantics which has little impact on the measure as such since the idea is still to replace the AME with assistance for urgent care only (for adults).”
• When it comes to disability, the far-right party focuses on caregivers, who avoid “billions of euros in social security spending”. In 2022, it planned to increase caregiver leave to 12 months for the entire career, and compensation of €300 per month for any caregiver deciding to live with a dependent relative.

Renaissance: a more balanced program?

As for the presidential party, Renaissance, few details are emerging at the moment, but the party seems to be continuing on its path:

• A major plan to combat medical deserts and the continuation of the measures undertaken: the removal of the numerus clausus, financial assistance allocated to city doctors so that they can hire medical secretaries.
• The delegation of tasks to other healthcare personnel, such as allowing certain nurses to sign death certificates or pharmacists to dispense certain antibiotics.
• Finally, they are the only ones to really address disability by making wheelchair reimbursement a reality, or by taking on a school accessible to all students as a project. The program is also the only one to mention prevention regarding infertility, endometriosis and menopause as major causes.

What similarities? What differences?

But how can we really take stock and find the consistencies and inconsistencies in these programs?facts in the rush” announces Florent Chapel.

All of them have in fact focused their program on access to care which remains one of the major priorities of the French (along with security and purchasing power). “And there are good proposals in each block” he admits. However, the experts’ analysis leads to three observations:

In the New Popular Front, there is a coercive message. “We intend to regulate the presence of doctors, and have more “everything”: more doctors, nursing homes, hospitals without making money on health. Private property is attacked and public money is spent. It’s wasteful.”

Renaissance promises to be the most liberal of all with new acts depending on the skills of each person (pharmacists, IPA, physiotherapist). The doctor as the security gate of the system has become too rigid, Renaissance intends to change that. “It doesn’t cost very much, in the end, since these actions have to be done. And with points targeting disability and prevention, they present from an analysis point of view, the most balanced program.”

At the National Rally, the program is quite close to the others in supporting the public hospital, with one important specificity however: “where the NFP attacks industry, the RN attacks administration directly. Their goal is to eliminate the ARS, to reduce the number of administrations. For them, if the health system functions poorly, it is because of two culprits, the administration and immigrants.”

But to truly choose, you will have to carefully examine each person’s programs, which is not an easy thing to do in such a short time. “What we really need is to ask everyone the same questions, well formulated, with multiple choice answers, to really compare. As they all have different ways of expressing themselves about health, it remains difficult to see clearly” underlines the analyst. Not sure we have time for that…