They consider “the dialogue blocked” with the National Health Insurance Fund and are considering a new national strike.
Believing “dialogue blocked“With the National Health Insurance Fund, the biology laboratories will no longer report from January 2 the results of the Covid tests which allow the government to follow the evolution of the epidemic, their unions indicated on Saturday in a press release at AFP. “Patients can continue to be tested in laboratories but the government will not receive any data feedbackin the national file, they specify.
“If this is not enough, we are considering a new national strike over several days and the total cessation of Covid acts for an indefinite period. We would like not to come to this for access to care for our patients, (it is) now up to the government to take its responsibilities and not to take the population hostage“, they say. “It’s a black January to avoid black years“, they plead.
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Biologists, who have sharply increased their profits with Covid tests, dispute the amount of savings that will be asked of them in return in the coming years. If a compromise seems in sight on the budgetary puncture for the year 2023, up to 250 million euros (divided between Covid tests and other examinations) as wanted by the government, the negotiation is blocked over the period 2024-2026.
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Social Security, however, puts on the table an envelope of 150 million over three years, to reimburse “innovative acts» currently reserved for hospitals. But without specifying the amount of savings expected on other acts, referred to “the signing of a multi-year protocol before the end of the first semester“. But biologists have already set their red line in terms of price reductions: no more than 145 million euros per year. To go beyond “would lead to the closure of at least 400 local laboratories (and) the loss of at least 10,000 skilled jobs“, they say.