Thousands of doctors demonstrated Tuesday in Paris, to express their anger against Health Insurance and the government, to demand better rates and to block a reform which facilitates access to other caregivers. White coats see red. “While there are not enough of us already, the government wants to put our heads under water and disgust us”, fulminates Isabelle Tassin, substitute general practitioner in the Yvelines.
Like thousands of other practitioners, she answered the call of the unions which, with rare unanimity, called for the closure of medical practices throughout the country and for a parade in the capital. A procession of more than 10,000 people according to the organizers, preceded by a dozen vehicles of SOS Médecins – also on strike for the occasion – and led by union leaders behind a banner “All united in the face of contempt”.
“The objective is in no way to set aside the general practitioner”
Leaving the Ministry of Health at the start of the afternoon, the demonstrators joined the Pantheon, not far from the Senate, where a bill on “direct access” to certain paramedics (nurses, physiotherapists, speech therapists) must be examined at the end of the day. A text accused by the unions of “endangering the health” of the population “by circumventing the coordination function of the attending physician”. A fear shared by Sébastien Chivoret, 37, a general practitioner from Pas-de-Calais who fears “a kind of uberization of medicine, where patients will go to consult right to left any person”.
Arguments defeated by the government. “The objective is in no way to put aside the general practitioner”, affirmed the Minister Delegate for the Health Profession, Agnès Firmin Le Bodo, who came to defend the text before the senators. On the contrary, this reform aims to “give more time for care” to doctors, said the Minister of Health François Braun on Franceinfo, saying “understand the concern of doctors, not their hostility”
The bill is also supported by nurses, including 50 unions and associations denounced Tuesday “a systematic opposition of doctors to any development of (other) health professions”. The Association of Mayors of France also said it was “favorable” to the text, as did the federation of patient associations, France Assos Santé.
“The system is really in danger”
The doctors’ unions, which denounced on the contrary a “dismantling of medicine”, were delighted to do better than their parade of January 5, which had brought together between 2,300 and 4,000 practitioners. “It’s a success”, welcomed Agnès Gianotti (MG France), seeing it as confirmation that “the system is really in danger”.
The mobilization was also reinforced by the deadlock in negotiations with the Health Insurance, whose proposal for an increase of barely 1.50 euros in the basic consultation – from 25 to 26.50 euros was experienced as “a provocation”, while the unions expect no less than 30 euros. An amount that François Braun himself considered “not absurd”.
Others are calling for an act at 50 euros, such as the Doctors for Tomorrow collective, at the origin of previous cabinet closures in December and during the Holidays. Its president Sophie Bauer estimated on franceinfo that it would cost “5 billion euros”, the price to pay according to her to “catch up for years of poverty”. “The negotiation is not over”, replied on France Inter the director of Health Insurance, Thomas Fatôme, stressing that his offer already represents 500 million euros, or “7,000 euros of additional fees” per year and by doctor.
“A give-and-take logic”
Before receiving the unions again on Thursday, he said he was ready to “go further in these revaluations, but in a give-and-take logic”. Counterparts are therefore expected, so that doctors undertake to “take more patients, do call duty, provide unscheduled care”, he said.
But the message does not get through to those concerned, like this general practitioner who is “fated to hear that we will have rights when we have done our homework” and deplores “a lack of general consideration” for her work. “I earn 6,000 euros a month but I work 55 hours a week,” she explains, adding that if “we earn our living well, it’s because we work like convicts”.