The 2024 Social Security budget (PLFSS) unveiled on Wednesday does not compensate for the 1.5 billion in additional costs that inflation has caused for hospitals in 2023, jeopardizing their financial situation, the federations of public hospitals (FHF) deplored on Tuesday and private (FHP).
Leaving the PLFSS presented on Wednesday as it stands would lead to a plan for major savings that the hospitalization sector could not support, estimated Lamine Gharbi, the president of the Federation of Private Hospitalization (FHP), in a press release.
How can we envisage for the French stopping activity or even outright closures of clinics in isolated areas or medium-sized towns? It is an intolerable prospect, he added.
More measuredly, the president of the FHF (public hospitals) Arnaud Robinet considered that the draft budget was a first step, but that it was necessary to go much further, because public hospitals and EHPADs are in an unprecedented budgetary situation.
We trust the parliamentary debate to greatly enrich the text, he indicated.
The PLFSS project presented on Wednesday to the Council of Ministers provides for a catch-up of 1.2 billion euros for hospitals for 2023.
But this catch-up is well below the envelope of 3 billion euros requested by hospitals, which had to face in 2023 the salary measures announced by the government, and inflation, particularly on the energy side.
According to the two federations, it is the cost of inflation that the government refused to include in its extension.
For 2024, the two hospital federations demanded an increase of 5 billion in spending on hospitals.
But according to the PLFSS press kit, the government only plans an increase of 3.3 billion euros.