For more than a year, the role of the public hospital and the exhausting work of its staff have been highlighted in the audiovisual media as in the written press. The work published by Pierre Ivorra, economic columnist at Humanity, Also gives us its share of moving testimonies from dedicated and competent nursing staff, subject to working conditions that are often unbearable in many respects. That of Stéphanie Tran, urologist at the Sainte-Musse public hospital in Toulon, specifies that “As a doctor, it’s hard to go on strike. Apart from putting something behind your back to let it be known, you have to work anyway ”. From emergencies to childbirth, through day-to-day care, all experiences show how hospitals are on the verge of collapse. But the author’s investigative work starts well before the years 2020 and 2021. Through an accumulation of precise information, reform after reform, Pierre Ivorra shows how we arrived at this aberration, by highlighting this sentence from the Communist deputy Alain Bruneel: “By treating deficits rather than the sick, the public hospital is dying and the quality of care is deteriorating worryingly. “
The book is divided into 14 chapters, the titles of which are evocative of the author’s reasoning: “Covid-19: the unexpected revealer”, “The public hospital on the verge of a nervous breakdown”, “Hospital emergencies close to the rupture ”,“ But where to give birth tonight? “,” Psychiatry in the midst of depression “,” The werewolf of debt “,” The private in ambush “,” Fight or suffer: you have to choose “. It ends with “France needs a great hospital service”. Abundant with information, also with numerous figures, the book is also easy to read and fascinating from start to finish. It shows us that political choices consisting in reducing the means of the health sector while helping to tax employees to reduce the employers’ contribution did not start in 2020, far from it. It was in 1990 that the government led by Michel Rocard implemented the generalized social contribution (CSG) to increase contributions from employees and retirees, which now provides 21% of social security funding.
Whether you are a parliamentarian or elected local, hospital staff or patient, trade unionist or political activist, journalist or ordinary citizen, reading this book helps us to see more clearly the situation of the public hospital, the current issues and the means to be put in place so that he regains the vocation given to him in 1945 by the Social Security set up by the Communist Minister Ambroise Croizat. Because, beyond its immediate topicality, this work by an active retiree who was head of section at Humanity and to Humanity Sunday We will also serve as a bedside book on social protection for the French for years to come.
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