The liberal doctors are on strike this December 1 and 2, 2022, to demand an increase in the consultation fee, from 25 euros to 50 euros. A request that has little chance of succeeding.
Two days of strike and a very followed movement: this Thursday December 1 and Friday December 2, many liberal doctors chose not to work to attract public opinion and put pressure on the government. A warning shot organized by the Federation of Doctors of France (FMF), the Union of Liberal Physicians (SML) and the French Union for Free Medicine (UFML), who all have a simple and strong demand: the revaluation of the tariff of the basic medical consultation at 50 euros, i.e. double the current 25 euros.
Will we have to write a check for 50 years to the doctor in the coming months? French household scholarships should not be directly affected, but the cost of such a measure is estimated at more than 7 billion euros for social security. If the government accepted, it would have to find significant sources of funding, through savings or tax increases. But the executive should not give in to the demands of the doctors’ unions, especially since the majority organization among general practitioners, MG France, has not endorsed this demand for the basic consultation at 50 euros. This “should be revalued to the height of inflation, but it is first of all the complex consultations of the attending physician who deserve special attention”, insists to Le Monde Agnès Giannotti, executive of MG France.
The government is also counting on the fact that this request is little accepted by public opinion. “I’m not sure it’s popular, or it’s the right time. […] the feeling of our fellow citizens towards doctors is starting to change”, judges Agnès Firmin Le Bodo, with Le Monde, who points to increasingly difficult access to care for the French. At the Ministry of Health, we are already putting warns the doctors on strike: “The negotiation on the financial means and in particular the price of the consultation is inseparable from a broader discussion on the commitment of the liberal doctors. This is the whole meaning of the logic of rights and duties that the minister has had the opportunity to mention on many occasions, “said a communication manager in the evening newspaper. Understand: the increases will not have take place in a significant way only if the doctors accept certain constraints on their freedom of installation, while the problem of medical deserts becomes a worrying subject.