Surgeries shut in France to protest reform bill
Doctors across France have closed their surgeries in a move to condemn a parliamentary debate over a government bill meant to reform the country’s public healthcare system.
Some 80 percent of surgeries were shut across the country as the controversial package of health reforms, which was proposed by Health Minister Marisol Touraine, went before parliament on Tuesday.
Carrying on their months-long protests against the bill, medical professionals called on fellow doctors to close surgeries and join protests across the country.
The proposed reform package would oblige doctors to bill the patients’ fees to insurance companies and the social security system.
Patients currently pay doctors up front for an appointment and they will get reimbursed by the state and insurance companies. However, under the reform bill, doctors will instead be reimbursed directly by public or private insurance companies.
Earlier this month, thousands of angry French doctors, dentists, physiotherapists, medical workers, students and hospital interns staged a protest march in Paris against the bill.
The protesters claim that not only does the reform put the future of the country’s medical professionals at risk, but it will also ruin the French healthcare system.
“Both doctors and patients in France will lose their liberty and independence. We will be dictated by insurance companies and depend on them for our salaries,” said Jean-Paul Ortiz from the Confederation of French Medical Unions (CSMF), the main union organizing the protests.
Touraine, however, strongly backs the advance fee waiver plan, which the government seeks to implement all over the country by 2017.
MIS/MHB/AS
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