The medical order denounces a health system “at the end of its rope” and calls for a “comprehensive reform”

Medical deserts in rural areas, shortage of personnel, saturation of emergencies, lack of resources … The president of the National Council of the Order of Physicians, Patrick Bouet, is alarmed in the Journal du Dimanche about the current state of the French health system and asks the government “for a comprehensive reform”.

The health system “is out of breath! We have really come to the end of a cycle” and “there is an urgent need to rethink everything from top to bottom”, he explains, considering that if “the machine keep turning “it’s” thanks to the engagement of nursing assistants, nurses, physiotherapists and doctors, students, liberal or public and private employees “.

Successive reforms to “ensure a balanced budget”

Patrick Bouet is indignant at the efforts required each year from nursing staff, without compensation and to the detriment of solidarity. “Emmanuel Macron was committed to reforming pensions but he had not planned to attack the health system. Also we fear that the project in preparation at the Ministry of Health is more of a poultice than the global reform expected by the whole population, “worries the general practitioner in Seine-Saint-Denis, who also considers that” all the successive reforms have had only one goal: to ensure a balanced budget. This makes you dizzy , a plan to return to balance each year! “. But for what result?

The 2017 edition of the Panorama de la Santé published by the OECD last November argued that the current French language system was efficient but could be improved. Since 1970, for example, life expectancy has increased by 10 years in all developed countries to reach 80.6 years. In France, the average is even 82.4 years. Social coverage is the responsibility of patients to pay only 7% of the health bill, making France the best covered developed country. But in addition to these achievements, many difficulties remain, such as the lack of equipment in hospitals, of resources, or of personnel, especially general practitioners in rural areas.

“Another important problem is the regrouping of establishments into regional hospital groups which is coming to an end, says the doctor. The false good idea was to pool resources and ensure better profitability by eliminating services and organizing group purchases. In fact, this does not works “.

The French health system compared to its neighbors

A ranking established by the journal The Lancet in May 2017 compared the most efficient health systems based on the mortality rates of 32 diseases (tuberculosis, breast cancer, leukemia, cardiovascular diseases, etc.), all of which have so-called preventable mortality with effective and rapid access to care. With a score of 95 out of 100, the principality of Andorra was in first position, followed by Iceland (94) and Switzerland (92). Australia was in sixth position and Japan in 11th place.

France, meanwhile, had the score of 88 and held the fifteenth place in this ranking. Its tobacco control policy, less rigorous than in other states, had been sanctioned, as was the death rate due to “collective violence” – which could be explained by the various mass attacks that occurred in 2015 and 2016.