Will the medical consultation go from 25 to 26.5 euros? Health Insurance has offered to increase its basic rate, we learned from unions on Thursday, less than a month before the deadline for negotiations. A gesture that does not pass with professionals, while a strike movement is expected for mid-February.
“It’s a provocation”, denounced Agnès Gianotti, president of MG France, the first organization among general practitioners, while her union demanded at least 30 euros to catch up with inflation since the switch to 25 euros in 2017. The negotiations had were “suspended” in mid-January. The “dialogue is going badly”, confirms another union, the SML, in a press release, also describing as “provocation” this “proposal to increase the value of the consultations by 1.50 euros”.
Contacted, Health Insurance confirmed that it had proposed “a revaluation of consultations for all liberal doctors by 1.50 euros”, except for teleconsultations which are “intended to remain at 25 euros”.
Some more expensive acts?
Discussions continue, however, on several “levels of consultation” that would be “linked to territorial engagement”. Certain complex acts (new patient, chronically ill, elderly) could thus be paid for more than 26.50 euros, provided that the doctor undertakes to follow up more patients or to participate in call duty in the evenings and on weekends, for example.
“Everything is only linked to constraints”, lamented Agnès Gianotti, “very pessimistic” on the outcome of the negotiations supposed to lead by the end of February to an agreement for the next five years. “If it’s not provocation, it’s a game, but it’s not very funny,” said Corinne Le Sauder, president of the FMF. In her union, “it is already grumbling among the executives, so when the base will see this, they will be crazy”, she predicted.
The six liberal practitioner organizations have called for or supported another day of practice closures on February 14.