New price negotiation session between the unions of independent doctors and Health Insurance. The two parties meet again this Thursday, February 8 for the first time since the Attal government took office. This new round, initially scheduled for January 25, had been postponed, in particular to give time to the government and the new Minister of Labor, Health and Solidarity, Catherine Vautrin, to get their bearings.
It is particularly awaited by doctors’ unions, with Health Insurance having to get to the heart of the matter, that is to say the pricing proposals for the next five years. This time “it’s sure, we’re talking business” and “if there are not thirty euros on the table (for the basic consultation with the general practitioner, Editor’s note), I will call the minister, and ask for arbitration », Warned the president of the CSMF union, Franck Devulder, in mid-January, on the sidelines of his greeting ceremony.
“Our demands are economically achievable. We are not far, close to 600, 700 million euros, from what was put on the table a few months ago. (…) In a system which costs 250 billion euros per year just for health”, it is “a question of political choice, we have to know what we want”, he said.
Agnès Giannotti, president of the main union of general practitioners MG France, assured that Ms. Vautrin, whom she met last week, seemed “very attentive” to her. “She is interested in the subject and obviously will continue to oversee it,” she told AFP on Wednesday. The absence for several weeks of a minister or secretary of state specifically in charge of Health “does not interfere so much with the work we are doing with Health Insurance” within the framework of the negotiations, according to her.
Price negotiations between Health Insurance and the six unions representing private doctors resumed on November 15, eight months after the failure of a first attempt to find an agreement for the next five years. Among the four areas of work set by the government is notably “the attractiveness of private medicine”, an important theme for the unions of private doctors.
But there is also a focus on the “relevance of care”, with the government intending to obtain, in exchange for price increases, commitments from the profession to better control the inexorable growth in health spending.
After the failure of the first negotiations last year, the basic consultation which had not changed since 2017 was increased by 1.50 euros. It thus went from 25 euros to 26.5 euros for the general practitioner – an increase deemed “ridiculous” by the unions.
