Liberal doctors called to strike to “save” their practices

Anger is still high in the health sector. Liberal doctors and biologists are called upon to close practices and laboratories on Thursday and Friday, some to demand price increases, others to avoid a “plane blow”.

For the first time since 2015, a very broad trade union front is calling for a strike to put pressure on the executive. This “historic movement” was initiated by the young group Doctors for Tomorrow, which in a few weeks gathered nearly 15,000 members on Facebook, a symptom of an anger that is spreading among the 110,000 liberal practitioners in practice.

The increase in the price of consultations requested

With the demand for the doubling of the consultation fee – from 25 to 50 euros – this group rallied the unions to its cause. They see it as a way to influence the open negotiations with Health Insurance for a new agreement for the next five years. “Fifty euros, it may seem completely crazy, but it’s a point on the horizon to approach the European average” of the consultation fee, around 45 euros, argues Jérôme Marty, of the UFML.

The rise in prices is presented by the unions as a necessity to create a “shock of attractiveness” towards city medicine crushed by administrative tasks to the detriment of care, and which no longer attracts young people.

Even if all the organizations do not call for a strike, like SOS Médecins and the union of pediatricians mobilized on the front line of the bronchiolitis epidemic, “thousands of medical offices will be closed”, assures Médecins for tomorrow . A rally is planned in Paris near the Ministry of Health this Thursday at 2 p.m. Twenty actions are also announced in other large cities, in front of health insurance funds, regional health agencies, blood transfusion centers.

Health insurance tries to calm things down

Beyond the financial subject, doctors are worried about their freedom of installation, which is increasingly questioned, especially in Parliament where bills on medical deserts are accumulating. They are headwinds against the possibility that certain nurses may be authorized to prescribe.

To clear up the situation, on the eve of the strike, Health Insurance wrote to the practitioners to “reaffirm the central role of the attending general practitioner in the course of care”. Without committing to an amount, she said she was ready “to revalue the prices of acts and consultations”, in a letter from its general manager Thomas Fatôme. But it is not certain that this message of appeasement will start the mobilization, which has received the support of the Order of Physicians, and which could rebound at the delicate time of the end of year celebrations. “If we are not heard, we will call for a hard and indefinite strike from December 26,” warned Doctors for tomorrow.

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