To protest against the drop in their prices provided for by the social security financing bill, the laboratories no longer eat the national file for screening tests since Thursday.
Le Monde with AFP
The showdown continues between the government and the biologists. Denouncing for a month for the “puncture” of 250 million euros that the executive intends to impose on them through the social security financing bill (PLFSS), the laboratories have ceased since Thursday, October 27 to feed the National file for COVVI-19 (SI-DEP) screening tests.
If patients still receive the result of their test, health authorities are no longer able to assess the spread of SARS-COV-2. Laboratories are no longer reimbursed by health insurance-their shortfall is estimated at 14 million euros per week.
“They make us blind in the face of the management of an epidemic that still kills” and “take the entire population hostage,” denounced the Minister of Health, François Braun on Friday on Europe 1 . “The attitude of the representatives of biologists is inconsistent, unconscious, inadmissible, I wrote to them to tell them,” he continued.
threatening “strike”
As part of the PLFSS, the analysis laboratories were ordered to revise the prices of their current exams (excluding COVVI-19 screening tests). The government plans, thanks to this measure, to achieve 250 million euros in savings in 2023. The bill, on which the Government sparked article 49.3 of the Constitution on October 26, provides “a drop in prices By decree “in the absence of an” agreement with significant savings “before the 1 er February, up to” at least 250 million “.
“A reasonable effort”, according to François Braun, “in the current circumstances of the profits made by biology”. “It is a sector that largely benefited from the COVID crisis”, going from “900 million [euros] profits in 2019 to 1.6 billion in 2020 and 3 billion in 2021, and that is the ‘Social security money, “developed the minister.
“We are attending to ask for efforts from the biology laboratories,” repeated the Minister of Public Accounts, Gabriel Attal, on October 28 in the Senate, also justifying the measure by “a profitability already high before the crisis” and still increased by additional more than 7 billion “turnover linked to tests” for two years.
Biologists had proposed to limit the puncture in the year 2023 alone, as profits from the additional activity due to the COVVI-19. “Okay for an exceptional contribution, but not for a completely blind planer,” warned Alain Le Meur, president of the Alliance for Medical Biology, ready to “go further”, until “a strike if the government does not understand “.