“Hugo? Number 31?” At the Toulon Freedom Medical Center, you don’t need to plan ahead to get an appointment. Here, you get a ticket at the entrance or on your smartphone and wait your turn. This Tuesday around 11 am, it will soon be Jacques, 56 years old. The consultation at 50 euros instead of 25, as demanded by the striking doctors, he does not believe in it.
“It’s a bit exaggeratedbelieves this history-geo teacher in college. Or else, that we also double the salaries of nurses, teachers and all the other professions that have been devalued in recent years.” The right price, according to him: 30 euros, for “taking inflation into account”. That is 3.50 euros more than the proposal from the Primary Health Insurance Fund (CPAM), which thought it was good to treat them with 26.50 euros.
100% refunds
In the waiting room, Fanny, a fast food manager, is even more understanding. “If it suits the doctors, so much the better. For me, it comes down to the same thing in the endshe says. With my mutual, I am reimbursed 100%.“You still have to be able to advance the costs. This is where it gets stuck for Sacha and his girlfriend, who will not be going out for Valentine’s Day on February 14, for lack of means.
“It’s a deterrentregrets the 29-year-old electrician. If the consultations go to 50 euros, I will delay a next trip as much as possible. Especially if I get sick at the end of the month. That would be really tricky.” The couple lives only on the gross 2,200 euros earned by Léa, account manager. “With the increase in electricity bills, the price of gasoline and food, we already have to pay attention to the slightest expense”underlines this Toulonnaise, whose last restaurant, paid for with holiday vouchers, dates back to this summer.
Even fewer slots?
Like this young couple, Patrick, a 50-year-old civil servant who has all the symptoms of nasopharyngitis, sees it as a major drawback. “It would risk overloading the emergency room even moredreads this nurse husband. Because of the price, but also the number of appointments which will mathematically decrease if the general practitioners take more time per patient. It’s already a mission to have a free slot from one week to the next!” This nuance: “On the other hand, it might attract young doctors…”
For Simon, a 42-year-old landscaper and father of three children, a 50-euro consultation would be “too much at once”. “And why not 100 euros while we’re at it?”, he quips. He did the math: “If we all fall ill in the same week in the family, I would have to advance almost a fifth of the minimum wage”. This Six-Fournais points, despite everything, to what he calls “an abnormality”: “In France, we pay more for a veterinarian than a doctor. Is it really normal to spend more money on an animal than a human?”
