An environmental senator has tabled a bill to improve access to healthcare for the most disadvantaged by legalizing “testing”. Doctors’ offices are not nightclubs, answer the doctors.
One in four times, the most disadvantaged would be denied access to care in a medical office (1) To fight against this injustice, an environmental senator (EELV) Aline Archimbaud, tabled on February 13 a bill aimed at ” improve access to care for the most destitute ”, beneficiaries of universal health coverage (CMU), complementary CMU (CMU-C) or State medical aid (AME). The objective, better sanction these refusals, and better inform the beneficiaries. For this, the senator proposes to formalize the testing to identify the doctors who refuse to treat CMU holders. The method is simple: a person comes to the doctor’s office to test the way in which he is received as a beneficiary of the Cmu.
Testing has already been used for other forms of discrimination: HIV status, gender, sexual orientation, origin or religion, for example. For the senator, this process would also make it possible to extend the definition of refusal of treatment. The fact, for example, of offering a patient an appointment in a manifestly excessive time compared to the average time of other appointments. This text therefore provides for giving a legal basis to “testing” to prove the refusal of care under cover of specifications to be defined by the Council of State.
The Interassociative Collective on Health (CISS) welcomed this bill “for more justice and equality in the care of sick people”. Another story from the liberal doctors. The main union, the Confederation of French medical unions (CSMF) “strongly opposes this new punitive text which demonstrates, once again, the profound ignorance of the health system by certain politicians”.
In this regard, the CSMF reminds us “that medical practices are not nightclubs and that they do not carry out selection at the entrance. Conventional devices allow all patients to be taken care of, including the most disadvantaged ”, underlines the press release. In addition, the CSMF considers “that the penalization of appointments is totally fanciful”. Because, on the one hand, certain pathologies do not call for urgent consultations, and on the other hand, certain waiting times that may arise are not attributable to the doctors, but to the State. This is the case, for example, of ophthalmologists who are not trained in sufficient numbers. “However, it is the State which fixes the number of clausus”. underlines the union.
The text should be studied by senators at the end of March.
(1) an assessment of the CMU was carried out in Paris in 2009, indicating a refusal of care of 25.5%. In another survey, carried out by Médecins du Monde in Nice in 2008-2009, 25.5% of gynecologists, 18% of general practitioners and 48% of dentists questioned expressed their refusal to treat patients benefiting from the CMU, CMU-C or AME.
.
