The showdown continues between the government and the biologists. Denouncing for a month the “puncture” of 250 million euros that the executive intends to impose on them through the Social Security financing bill (PLFSS), the laboratories have ceased since Thursday, October 27 to supply the national file of Covid screening tests -19 (SI-Dep).
If patients still receive their test results, health authorities are no longer able to assess the spread of SARS-CoV-2. The laboratories are no longer reimbursed by Medicare – their loss of earnings is estimated at 14 million euros per week.
“They make us blind to the management of an epidemic that still kills” and “take the whole population hostage”, denounced Friday the Minister of Health, François Braun, on European 1. “The attitude of the representatives of the biologists is inconsistent, unconscious, inadmissible, I wrote to them to tell them”he continued.
Threat of “strike”
As part of the PLFSS, the analysis laboratories have been ordered to lower the prices of their routine examinations (excluding Covid-19 screening tests). The government plans, thanks to this measure, to achieve savings of 250 million euros in 2023. The bill, on which the government triggered article 49.3 of the Constitution on October 26, provides “a reduction in prices by order” in the absence of a “deal with significant savings” before 1er February, up “of at least 250 million”.
“reasonable effort”according to François Braun, “in the current circumstances of the benefits made by biology”. “It is a sector that has benefited greatly from the Covid crisis”passing “900 million [d’euros] profits in 2019 to 1.6 billion in 2020 and 3 billion in 2021, and that is Social Security money”developed the minister.
“We assume to ask for efforts from the biology laboratories”repeated the Minister of Public Accounts, Gabriel Attal, on October 28 in the Senate, also justifying the measure by “Already high profitability before the crisis” and further increased by an increase of more than 7 billion “test-related revenue” for two years.
The biologists had proposed to limit the puncture to the single year 2023, under the profits resulting from the additional activity due to Covid-19. “Okay for an exceptional contribution, but not for a totally blind plane”had warned Alain Le Meur, president of the Alliance for medical biology, ready to ” go further “until “a strike if the government does not [les] not include “.