Fight against medical deserts, hospital reform, prevention efforts… Four candidates for the Elysée – Valérie Pécresse, Anne Hidalgo, Yannick Jadot and Fabien Roussel – had the opportunity to detail their measures for health and protection social, tuesday 1is March, during the grand oral organized by the Mutualité française in Paris. The three left-wing candidates have all demanded that the public hospital be exempted from profitability ambitions.
Yannick Jadot: first, “not to get sick”
Among the priorities of the ecologist candidate, putting an end to the design of the hospital as “adjustment variable of our health system”. “For several five years, the public hospital was considered a business that had to be profitable: fee-for-service, reduction of beds, lower budget, Ondam [Objectif national de dépenses d’assurance-maladie] which was reducing year after year…”, says Mr. Jadot. He counts “get out of this logic deeply” by causing a “burst of attraction”with the recruitment of 100,000 nurses and the improvement of working conditions and salaries.
About the “environmental health”, it is above all a question of doing more against chronic diseases linked to pollution. The candidate called for “coming out of denial”citing a 40% increase in the number of long-term illnesses in ten years.
“Today’s health policy is first and foremost a care policy; in our logic, it is first of all not to fall ill », said the candidate, deploring that prevention only accounts for 1.8% of the health budget. Yannick Jadot also wants to fight against “undeniable regression in the consideration of arduous work” at work during the Macron five-year term: “Executives retiring have a life expectancy of ten years longer than blue-collar workers. It’s unbearable “he lambasted.
Anne Hidalgo: a health debate in Parliament every semester
The socialist candidate spoke for five minutes to present her vision of health in France on Tuesday morning, before answering questions from the public gathered at the Mutualité française. Anne Hidalgo considered that the French health system presented “extremely strong signs of difficulties” even before the Covid-19 crisis. “Caregivers were already telling us: we cannot ask the hospital for the profitability required of a private company”according to her, adding that “public service is not the service reserved for those who cannot afford the private sector”.
Like Yannick Jadot, the socialist proposes to no longer finance the public hospital from an Ondam (national health insurance spending target) and fee-for-service. She also wants to increase the number of caregivers. Concerned about health democracy, Ms. Hidalgo intends to hold a debate on health in Parliament twice a year.
Against medical deserts, she proposes for the long term to achieve the training of 15,000 doctors per year, as well as more nurses and midwives. But to deal with the emergency, it is a question of“use the fourth year of internship as a year of professionalization”, during which interns would be sent to the medical deserts. They would be paid 3,500 euros per month for this. From 2022, this would allow “to move around 4,000 young interns to medical deserts”according to her.
Fabien Roussel: “We will make the capital contribute”
The communist candidate for the Elysée, Fabien Roussel, estimated that “Social protection in our country is declining, social inequalities in health are widening and medical deserts are advancing”. Like the other two left-wing candidates present, he vilified the “accounting view” of health, which places nursing staff “in great pain”. He lamented a “health increasingly commodified, with immense profits up to nursing homes and very lucrative private clinics”.
Against the “multiplication of exemptions from employer contributions”he assured that “we will make capital contribute at the same level as labor”. He also regretted that“in twenty-five years taxation has been multiplied by fifteen on mutuals”and that these were “competition with private insurance”. Result, according to him: “Access to care is questioned. »
The communist therefore intends “rebuilding a great social security of the XXIe century »with a “true 100% reimbursement for all treatments”including long-term conditions, and “not only for hospitalization costs”. He also called for a “great public service for the elderly”.
Valérie Pécresse intends to “debureaucratize” the hospital
The Republican candidate first observed a health system “in great pain”, with 5 million French people, according to her, who do not have a doctor. The candidate lamented a “decline in access to care” and deadlines “far too long”as well as medical deserts “in rural areas, popular neighborhoods and city centers of certain large cities”.
As a solution, the right-wing candidate has proposed decentralizing the management of health care provision – this would include giving the presidency of regional health agencies to the regions. It also wants to create a “junior doctor” status for general practitioners, which would consist in sending 4,000 young doctors each year to follow an additional year of study in “deficient territories”. Nurses, midwives and pharmacists would be given more responsibilities. The objective is to “divide by two” the time required to access care less than thirty minutes from home.
Regarding the hospital, she wants to recruit 25,000 caregivers and train during the five-year period twice as many doctors as today. It would also be a question of “debureaucratize” the hospital, so that it is more “open and transparent”. She would like part of the pricing to depend on patients’ opinions on the quality of care received. A “prevention revolution” must also allow all French people, within ten years, to enjoy three additional years of life expectancy in good health.
