2024-09-20 08:16:07
To show their opposition to the price reductions imposed on them by health insurance, they promise to mobilize « massive ». Medical analysis laboratories will keep “almost all” closed doors, Friday September 20, until Monday, for four days of strike called by biologists’ unions. “Almost all medical biology laboratories will close”assured in a joint press release seven representative organizations of the sector, both public and private, including the National Union of Medical Biologists (SNMB) and the Union of Biologists (SDBIO, liberal biologists) or the National Union of Hospital Biologists (SNBH).
“It will be massive. The big leaders, the people in charge, we saw them, everyone agreed.”recalled François Blanchecotte, president of the SDBIO, on Thursday. He assures that he had in an anonymized survey “100% positive response” for this movement.
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Biologists accuse the National Health Insurance Fund (CNAM) of having “betrayed” a three-year conventional agreement (2024-2026) signed in June 2023, and to have decided during the summer, “without prior consultation” and in “the absence of government”to reduce the prices of procedures by 9%, starting September 11.
The conflict between the CNAM and the unions results from a demand for biological analyses that is significantly higher than expected in the first months of 2024 (+5.5% in volume). The CNAM intends to maintain the budget envelope planned for the year (3.784 billion excluding Covid and certain specific expenses in 2024), which implies reducing certain rates. It assures that it only wants “respect the terms” of the agreement, “which sets annual envelopes”.
Tariffs to be re-discussed in 2025
According to the joint figures given by both parties, the Health Insurance wants to recover some 120 million euros over the last four months of 2024. This represents, for biologists, a loss of turnover.
In the absence of a serving health minister, biologists have little hope of seeing the rates corrected quickly, but are demanding “a reopening of negotiations”the restful agreement “on erroneous figures from the CNAM”Mr. Blanchecotte said.
For them the situation « met en danger » local laboratories and risks causing closures of fragile sites, staff reductions or even reduced opening hours.
In a letter addressed to the unions at the end of August, the director of the CNAM, Thomas Fatôme, recalled that the number of laboratories and sampling sites is increasing, as “from 4,266 at the beginning of January 2023 to 4,421 at the end of May 2024”. Rates “will be called upon to be re-discussed” at the beginning of 2025 in “function of the observed dynamics”he wrote, not ruling out increases if “these were compatible, even necessary”to respect the envelope.
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