The unions of liberal doctors and biologists are calling for the closing of surgeries and laboratories on Thursday and Friday, December 2.
Source AFP
© LIONEL BONAVENTURE / AFP
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LSome are calling for an increase in prices, others want to avoid “a planing stroke”. Unions of liberal doctors and biologists are calling for a strike, Thursday and Friday, December 2, to challenge certain key measures of the bill on the social security budget in 2023. They have also engaged in tough negotiations with the Secu and the government.
As this date approaches, tension is unusually high among practitioners. It is the first time since 2015 and the Touraine law that all the unions of liberal doctors have called for a strike to put pressure on the executive. A movement initiated by the young collective “Doctors for tomorrow”, created at the end of August and which to date brings together more than 14,000 members on Facebook, a symptom of a dull anger which is spreading in the profession. With the “single claim” of doubling the price of the consultation – from 25 to 50 euros – this “apolitical and non-union” group rallied all the representative organizations to its cause.
“These two days of closure must constitute an electric shock”
Obliged to follow their base, the representative organizations also see a means of weighing in the negotiation which has just opened with the Health insurance, with a view to a new agreement for the next five years. Some unions do not hide their closeness to this group, such as the UFML and the FMF, who came to their first negotiation session accompanied by a representative of “Doctors for tomorrow”. A sterile consultation for the FMF, which believes that faced with public authorities “deaf to (their) suffering”, liberal doctors must “scream even louder”.
“These two days of closure must constitute an electric shock”, affirms for its part the SML which has long called for a consultation at 50 euros to give doctors “the means to remain liberal”. Health Insurance has, for its part, promised some upgrades, in particular for general practitioners, pediatricians and psychiatrists.
But beyond the financial subject, doctors are also worried about their freedom of installation, which is increasingly questioned, especially in Parliament where bills on medical deserts are accumulating. Counterproductive “political solutions”, when it is rather “urgent to quickly regain attractiveness”, judge Franck Devulder, president of the CSMF. Diagnosis shared by her counterpart from MG France, Agnès Gianotti, for whom the fight against the “loss of meaning of the profession” does “pass neither by constraint nor by contempt”. The sacred union extends to their cadets of Young Doctors, who also demand “consideration”, as well as to the interns of Isni, reassembled against the “disconnected decisions” of the government – and always mobilized against the addition a tenth year of study for future general practitioners.
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“Hard strike” at Christmas?
This common front bodes well for a prolonged conflict, according to a union leader who is already planning a strike by the guards in December, then a new closure of the cabinets during the end-of-year holidays. The collective “Doctors for tomorrow” has also mentioned a “hard strike” from December 26th.
“I’m not sure it’s popular, or it’s the right time,” warned Agnès Firmin Le Bodo last week. For the Minister Delegate for Health Professions, the growing difficulties of access to care have repercussions and “the feeling of our fellow citizens with regard to doctors is beginning to change”.
But the argument of public opinion has its limits, as demonstrated by biologists. Pointed out for two months for its record profits linked to Covid tests, the sector stubbornly refuses the puncture of 250 million euros per year on other exams, included in the Social Security budget. After a first three-day strike in mid-November, unions and large medical analysis groups are again calling for the laboratories to be closed on Thursday and Friday. Their last chance before the final vote on the bill that the executive does not seem ready to modify. On the contrary, the Minister of Health, François Braun, again denounced last week actions “unethical” and putting “in danger the continuity of care”.