Geoffrey Branger / Photo credit: JOE RAEDLE / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / AFP
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced on Saturday a series of measures to address the crisis in community healthcare, freshly welcomed by doctors’ unions while some could raise eyebrows, such as a penalty of five euros for unattended medical appointments. honored.
Pay 5 euros for missing a doctor’s appointment. Gabriel Attal warned this during his general policy speech, it is now confirmed. In an interview with the regional press, the Prime Minister assures that patients who do not attend their consultation will be penalized by the famous “rabbit tax”. Other measures unveiled by the head of government, the possibility for pharmacists to dispense antibiotics for tonsillitis or cystitis, or even being able to go to the physiotherapist without having to go through a general practitioner. Announcements that do not please everyone.
We want to keep the best and most beautiful health system in the world. And we’re going to get there.
To continue to fight for him, we will, thanks to these new measures, win back 15 to 20 million medical appointments each year and simplify the daily life of… pic.twitter.com/sass8y4R0O
— Gabriel Attal (@GabrielAttal) April 6, 2024
“The system is on the ground”
The doctors are rather divided, even very angry, like Jérôme Marty, the president of the union French Union for Free Medicine. “We have once again been presented with a whole series of measures which are more about incoherence than coherence. I am worried. There are elections coming up, we have to show that we are doing something, so we are tinkering and we display it”, he laments at the microphone of Europe 1. According to him, everyone is suffering, all French people are having difficulties and the system is on the ground.
“The system is on the ground and we can build it with caregivers. We just need to revive creativity, recognize caregivers for who they are and do everything so that people are happy to provide care. This is not the case today. We have loss of meaning everywhere, we have people who give up, we no longer have doctors, we no longer have nurses, we no longer have caregivers. We are in degraded mode everywhere, in medico-social, in private clinics, in hospitals. This is where we are today, due to incoherent health policy”, denounces Jérôme Marty.