Thousands of doctors demonstrated in Paris on Tuesday to express their anger against Health Insurance and the government, to demand better rates and to block a reform which facilitates access to other caregivers.
White coats see red. “While there are not enough of us already, the government wants to put our heads under water and disgust us”, fulminates Isabelle Tassin, substitute general practitioner in the Yvelines.
Like thousands of other practitioners, she answered the call of the unions which, with rare unanimity, called for the closure of medical practices throughout the country and for a parade in the capital.
A procession of between 4,500 participants, according to the police headquarters, and more than 10,000, according to the organizers.
Leaving from the Ministry of Health at the start of the afternoon, the demonstrators joined the Pantheon, not far from the Senate, where a Macronist bill on “direct access” to certain paramedics (nurses, physiotherapists, speech therapists) has was voted on at first reading in the evening.
The unions accuse the text of “endangering the health” of the population “by circumventing the coordination function of the attending physician”. A fear shared by Sébastien Chivoret, 37, a general practitioner from Pas-de-Calais who fears “a kind of uberization of medicine, where patients will go to consult right to left any person”.
These arguments are challenged by the government. “The objective is in no way to put aside the general practitioner”, affirmed the Minister Delegate for the Health Profession, Agnès Firmin Le Bodo, who came to defend the text before the senators. On the contrary, this reform aims to “give more time for care” to doctors, said the Minister of Health François Braun on franceinfo, saying “understand the concern of doctors, not their hostility”.
The bill is also supported by nurses, including 50 unions and associations denounced Tuesday “a systematic opposition of doctors to any development of (other) health professions”. The Association of Mayors of France also said it was “favorable” to the text, as did the federation of patient associations, France Assos Santé.
– “Give and take” –
The doctors’ unions, which denounced on the contrary a “dismantling of medicine”, were delighted to do better than their parade of January 5, which had brought together between 2,300 and 4,000 practitioners. “It’s a success”, welcomed Agnès Gianotti (MG France).
The mobilization was also reinforced by the deadlock in negotiations with the Health Insurance, whose proposal for an increase of barely 1.50 euros in the basic consultation – from 25 to 26.50 euros was experienced as “a provocation”, while the unions expect no less than 30 euros. An amount that Mr. Braun himself considered “not absurd”.
Others are calling for an act at 50 euros, such as the Doctors for Tomorrow collective, at the origin of previous cabinet closures in December and during the Holidays. Its president Sophie Bauer estimated on franceinfo that it would cost “5 billion euros”, the price to pay according to her to “catch up for years of poverty”.
“The negotiation is not over”, replied on France Inter the director of Health Insurance, Thomas Fatôme, stressing that his offer already represents 500 million euros, or “7,000 euros of additional fees” per year and by doctor.
Before receiving the unions again on Thursday, he said he was ready to “go further in these revaluations, but in a give-and-take logic”. Counterparts are therefore expected, so that doctors undertake to “take more patients, do call duty, provide unscheduled care”, he said.
But the message does not get through to those concerned, like this general practitioner who is “fated to hear that we will have rights when we have done our homework” and deplores “a lack of general consideration” for her work. “I earn 6,000 euros a month but I work 55 hours a week,” she explains, adding that if “we earn our living well, it’s because we work like convicts”.
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