there are still “blocking points” despite “progress”, regrets the MG France doctors’ union

Doctors and Medicare met Thursday and Friday for a final price negotiation session. According to the draft agreement, the price of a consultation with a general practitioner will increase to 30 euros in December.

There is still “blocking points” despite “advances”, Agnès Giannotti, president of the MG France doctors’ union, said this Saturday on franceinfo. The price of a consultation with a general practitioner will increase to 30 euros in December, according to a draft agreement finalized by Health Insurance and the unions of private doctors.

“There is progress, that’s for sure”but “we are far from the shock of attractiveness that the population needs for young people to want to settle down”, she explained. The text must now be validated by a sufficiently representative group of unions to enter into force. The MG France union will question its base at the end of next week after consulting the final text on Monday or Tuesday.

“It should still be noted that 30 euros, this is the value that our consultation should have just to compensate for inflation. It’s not an increase, it’s an upgrade to take inflation into account.”, specified Agnès Giannotti. But “we also know the state of the country’s finances, we are citizens like any other”she added.

This draft agreement represents an effort of 1.6 billion on the part of the State. Among the new measures, the long consultation for the elderly, from 2026, at the price of 60 euros: “This was indeed one of our main requests which is not quite up to par.”she reacts. “We are disappointed”because “we wanted at least once or twice a year to be able to do this consultation for those over 80, or even those over 75. There, it’s only if the patient leaves the hospital or is he has more than ten medications on his prescription”she explained.

For MG France, one of the “blocking points” important is the non-obligation to return to the general practitioner when a specialist redirects the patient to another specialist: “It is the possibility that the second specialist has a consultation value which is twice ours, that is to say at 60 euros. This means that it almost automatically puts the consultation of other specialties at twice the value of that of general practitioners.” According to her, the risk is that “tomorrow, no young person will ever want to be a general practitioner again, you will only have specialists” she fears. In 2023 “we lost 500 general practitioners, we gained 1,300 other specialists. The gap risks increasing”warns Agnès Giannotti.

The president of MG France notes “really interesting progress in this convention”, particularly on the reduction of administrative burdens. But “we really need to lift the blockages”she explains. “We hope that in the final text, there will be a version that can be validated by the members of the union, but at this stage, we do not know”she indicated.