After the seventh 49.3 of the fall, Parliament voted, Friday evening, December 2, the Social Security budget for 2023. The deputies rejected a motion of censure from the Nupes, resulting in the final adoption of the text. Here are the key changes brought about by this new budget.
- Free morning after pill
Emergency contraception becomes free for all women, without medical prescription. The text also plans to make it possible to screen for certain sexually transmitted infections without a prescription for everyone, and free for those under 26.
To fight against social inequalities in health, prevention consultations will also be offered at key ages in life (20-25, 40-45 and 60-65). These meetings should be “the place to identify sexist and sexual violence”, added the deputies.
- Package of tobacco at 11 euros in 2024
The average package price, currently 10.15 euros, should rise to 11 euros in 2024, depending on inflation. Taxation on tobacco brings in between 13 and 14 billion per year, against a cost of 20 to 26 billion euros for health insurance.
- More staff in nursing homes
Following years of medical misery and after the shock of the Orpea scandal, 3,000 nurses and nursing assistants will come to reinforce the staff of retirement homes, the first stage of a plan of 50,000 additional recruitments by 2027. will add 4,000 additional places in home-help services. New requirements on the transparency and financial regulation of institutions have also been put in place. The national “floor rate” per hour of intervention for home help services is raised to 23 euros in 2023.
- Support for parents extended and reinforced
The financial assistance paid to families who have their child looked after by a childminder will be reassessed, so that their remaining dependents are the same as if the child benefited from a place in a crèche. Single-parent families will now receive financial assistance for childcare until they enter college, and no longer until the start of CP. And the minimum alimony paid by the CAF in the event of default by the other parent will be increased by 50%: it will increase from 123 to 185 euros per month.
- Medical students, caregivers and pharmacists…
The boarding school for general practitioner students will finally be extended by one year, with internships outside the hospital and “as a priority” in medical deserts to better train them in liberal practice and support their installation. Deputies from all sides pleaded for an “obligation” of internships in medical deserts. The possibility for doctors and nurses to work until the age of 72 in hospitals has also been extended until 2035.
In addition, young caregivers will no longer be able to work on a temporary basis as soon as they leave school, but must first practice “in another framework”, salaried or liberal, “for a minimum period” which will be fixed by decree. Temporary work is becoming more and more expensive for hospitals. Due to the lack of on-call doctors throughout the territory on evenings and weekends, it is planned to extend the “permanence of care” to nurses, midwives and dentists. Pharmacists and nurses will also now have the ability to prescribe vaccines. And midwives will be able to vaccinate more people.
- A provisional deficit of 19 billion
Since the abyssal record of 2020 (nearly 39 billion), the losses have been reduced, to less than 25 billion in 2021. For this year, they were programmed at 17.8 billion. But the Assembly and the Senate voted on the government’s proposal for extensions for the hospital, in particular to deal with the epidemics of bronchiolitis and Covid, which brings the projected deficit to 18.9 billion. For 2023, it should be 7.1 billion, if the government’s optimistic assumptions are confirmed.
The budget does not provide for any planing on the hospital, but savings of around one billion on medicine, 250 million on analysis laboratories, 150 million on imaging, and as much on complementary health insurance. Faced with the rebellion of drug manufacturers, the government however backed down, in mid-October, on certain measures binding them. The analysis laboratories remain headwind against the requested puncture, and are on strike until Saturday.