Baptiste Morin, edited by Gauthier Delomez / Photo credits: Sandrine Marty / Hans Lucas / Hans Lucas via AFP
modified to
7:18 p.m., August 10, 2023
“When it is announced that doctors are ‘delinquents’, it is all the same particularly impolite, incorrect”, denounces a health professional interviewed by Europe 1. This is one of the 5,000 general practitioners considered to be major prescribers of work stoppages by health insurance. To hunt down courtesy stops, she contacted all these doctors by mail to ask them to account.
“We don’t sleep anymore, we have a stomach ache”
An approach that this practitioner joined by Europe 1 does not appreciate, and who preferred to remain anonymous. “When I got the letter saying that I was one of these ‘delinquents’, it made me very, very bad. We don’t sleep anymore, we have a stomach ache”, testifies the doctor, who evokes the content of the mail. According to him, Health Insurance asks him not to produce more than 1,100 daily allowances over six months. “It’s an unattainable goal,” he berates.
“I treat patients, not numbers,” adds the doctor. Who assures: “I have never taken work stoppages on Monday mornings, said to be of convenience, and other things like that. It is certain and certain that if I had any desire to do the famous accumulation of employment- retirement after December 2025, there is no question of it at all.”
The risk of being put under prior agreement
Beyond this testimony, Europe 1 was able to speak with other health professionals suspected of delivering too many work stoppages, who work in the Paris region, in Burgundy or even in the south-west. All describe the specificities of their patient base, with precarious profiles, workers, warehouse order pickers or even winegrowers. In short, patients with physically demanding professions.
By mail, therefore, the Health Insurance asks them to reduce the number of work stoppages that they will issue from September, and this for six months. The objective is quantified, from -10% to even -20% for one of them. The latter should therefore no longer sign one stop in five.
The practitioners contacted by Europe 1 chose to refuse these objectives. They are therefore now exposed to a prior agreement. In this case, each stop he prescribes must be validated after advice by the Health Insurance.