Paris (AFP)
The National Assembly voted Thursday in favor of a new method of financing emergencies, including distribution of allocations according to the population in the territory concerned, a provision deemed rather welcome by the opposition, but considered insufficient to meet to the crisis.
The amendment, adopted in the framework of the review of the draft budget of the Sécu for 2020, is the result of the work led by MP Thomas Mesnier (LREM) in the framework of a mission on emergencies, on strike for seven month. It had already been voted in the same terms in committee.
The former emergency doctor explained that it was "transforming the financing of our emergency services that has not changed since 2006".
The device aims to establish "a share of majority funding to the population package", which would reduce inequalities between territories, detailed the elected Charente. It also maintains "activity-based funding" weighted according to the severity of patients in care and introduces "quality funding" into emergency departments.
This includes reducing funding based on activity, while the saturation of emergencies, whose attendance has doubled in twenty years (21.4 million passages in 2017), is one of the causes of the crisis.
Secretary of State Christelle Dubos has been very supportive, noting that currently 75% of funding is activity-based. The rapporteur Olivier Véran (LREM) praised "a beautiful model of funding much more decorrelated from the activity", saying that this "largely answers all the problems related to financing in emergencies".
Several opposition politicians welcomed the provision rather favorably, like Jean-Pierre Door (LR).
But, "if it's probably better than the existing, it will not be enough," said Boris Vallaud (PS).
For the communist Pierre Dharréville, if the funding remains "in the current envelope", it "will not make the emergency doctors and the country believe that the solutions are on the table".
Caroline Fiat (LFI), a nursing assistant, saw a "bandage on a leg of wood", deploring like other elected officials that emergency funding is thus amended by amendment.
Despite the plan of "refoundation" emergencies presented on 9 September by the Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn and valued at "more than 750 million euros" over three years, the strike movement began in March continues.
© 2019 AFP