Doctors and biologists in the private sector closed practices and laboratories this Thursday and Friday in France, the first to demand price increases, the others to avoid a budgetary “plane blow”.
This strike movement rallied a very broad front of professional organizations of some 110,000 so-called “liberal” practitioners as well as trade unions. The flagship demand concerns a doubling of the basic price of the consultation – from 25 to 50 euros -, to bring France closer to a European average of 45 euros, plead the organizers of the movement. This increase would also create a “shock of attractiveness” towards so-called “city” medicine crushed by administrative tasks to the detriment of care, and which no longer attracts young people.
Doctors are also worried about their freedom of establishment, which is increasingly called into question, particularly in Parliament where bills on “medical deserts” are accumulating, where access to care is made difficult in particular by the lack of voluntary practitioners to settle there.
We are reaching a point of no return, there are no longer any young people who want to settle down. We didn’t do 10 years of studies to do paperwork.
Liberal doctors in the street to express their fed up
Health Insurance (Social Security) said it was ready ” to increase the prices of acts and consultations without committing to an amount. ” Are the French ready to pay 50 euros? It costs 7 billion euros. Are they ready for their supplementary health insurance to increase? “, reacted on Franceinfo the boss of Health Insurance, Thomas Fatôme.
The support of the College of Physicians
The government spokesperson, Olivier Véran, said on Thursday on BFMTV that he wanted to leave “ health insurance working with unions “. But he said he understands perfectly the stress, even the distress in which a certain number of our doctors find themselves “.
The movement, which has received the support of the powerful Order of Physicians which federates the profession, could rebound at the delicate time of the end of year celebrations. ” If we are not heard, we will call for a hard and unlimited strike from December 26 “, warned Doctors for tomorrow. ” I’m not sure it’s popular, or it’s the right time “warned the Minister Delegate for Health Professions, Agnès Firmin Le Bodo.
Biology laboratories, for their part, singled out for their record profits linked to Covid-19 tests, refuse a puncture of 250 million euros per year on other examinations, included in the Social Security budget. ” This blow will lead to the closure of local laboratories », Alarmed François Blanchecotte (Biologists’ Union), on behalf of a profession which employs 52,000 employees and could lose 400 of its 4,200 sites according to him.
(With AFP)