“Asking young doctors to settle for five years where the population needs them is not scandalous”

En the midst of the emergency room crisis, general practitioners demonstrated to bring a demand for the price of the consultation to be doubled from 25 to 50 euros – a requirement that makes the demands for salary increases expressed in many sectors during the year 2022 modest. .

Far be it from us to condemn any debate on the level of remuneration of general practitioners. However, given their current level of income – they belong to the wealthiest 10% of French people – and given the state of our healthcare system, these professionals will only be heard if they agree to debate compensation likely to reduce the health divide that is tearing our country apart.

Since 2017, senior territorial officials, local actors immersed in the heart of French life, have been warning about the unbearable nature of the inequalities suffered by our fellow citizens in this area. Indeed, according to the study published on November 7, 2022 by UFC-Que Choisir on the French health divide, nearly 23.5% of patients live in a so-called “difficult to access”who do not have access to a general practitioner less than thirty minutes from their home.

A form of humiliating downgrading

According to Social Security figures, the average density of general practitioners is 150 per 100,000 inhabitants, varying between 266 general practitioners per 100,000 inhabitants in the Hautes-Alpes, where it is highest, to less than 100 doctors per 100 000 inhabitants in Eure, Seine-et-Marne and Eure-et-Loir, departments where it is lowest in metropolitan France.

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As for overseas, the density in Mayotte is only 49 general practitioners per 100,000 inhabitants. The situation is even more alarming for specialized medicine, where geographical divide and financial divide combine. Still according to the aforementioned UFC-Que Choisir study, seven out of ten patients live more than forty-five minutes away from a gynecologist classified as sector 1, that is to say, who does not charge an excess fee.

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But beyond the figures, the gap between the legitimate sense of urgency of people living in a medical desert and the long duration of the measures proposed marks a form of humiliating downgrading and feeds the theses of public impotence. When one is an elderly person, bedridden or in fragile health, when the future is by definition uncertain, it is not possible to be told that solutions will be found in several years.

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