2023-08-24 14:32:36
Seeking savings for its next budget, the government is seriously considering increasing medical deductibles. Representatives of patients and doctors are up in arms against the measure which “will not straighten out the system” according to them.
The medical deductible designates the remaining charge of 50 cents paid by the insured for each box of medication or paramedical procedure. Invited this Wednesday on France Bleu for her media return, the Prime Minister confirmed that the increase in medical franchises was “part of the tracks” for budgetary savings in 2024.
Disempowered patients?
“It is obviously not a question of preventing people from getting treatment”, nuanced Élisabeth Borne, ensuring that she wanted to protect “vulnerable, very modest” people as well as patients with heavy or chronic pathologies. But France consumes “more drugs” than its neighbors, she nevertheless recalled.
The government has been preparing minds for this probable increase since the spring. The “virtually free” drugs can lead to “disempower the patient”, thus judged in June the Minister of the Economy Bruno le Maire. But in the midst of inflation and a purchasing power crisis, the measure is risky. ” I understand [que] everything that weighs on purchasing power “concerns the French, declared the Minister of Health Aurélien Rousseau, without however questioning the measure.
Amounts doubled and ceilings raised
Created in 2008 under the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy, this franchise has not changed since: 50 cents per box of medicine and paramedical act (physiotherapist, nursing care) and 2 euros per medical transport, with an amount capped at 50 euros per year and per insured, beyond which everything is reimbursed. According to The echoesthe government now wants to double the amounts.
This increase could also concern the “flat-rate contribution” which applies to the doctor, which would increase from 1 to 2 euros, another envelope also capped at 50 euros annually. The government also plans to extend the franchise to medical devices such as dressings or crutches, which were previously exempt. Finally, a doubling of the annual ceilings is under consideration. The potential gain amounts to several hundred million euros, up to 1.5 billion if the ceilings are raised.
“It’s not public health that counts”
“I am shocked by such leads in the middle of vacation, without any consultation, which directly target the sick”, reacted the president of France Assos Santé, Gérard Raymond to theAFP. He considers “very damaging” that Elisabeth Borne has definitively rejected the trail of an increase in taxes on alcohol, products “extremely dangerous for health”.
“In these very political choices, we can clearly see that it is not public health that counts,” added the president of the MG France doctors’ union, Agnès Giannotti. Attacking franchises “is totally unequal” and amounts to “charging the most modest, the sickest”, according to her. While some are exempt, “all those barely above the thresholds”, already hit by inflation, risk “forgoing care”, she warned.
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