Considering “the blocked dialogue” with the National Health Insurance Fund, the biology laboratories will no longer report the results of the Covid tests that allow the Government to follow the evolution of the epidemic as of January 2, their authorities indicated this Saturday. unions in a statement.
“A new national strike” is expected
“Patients will be able to continue taking tests in laboratories but the government will not receive any data feedback” in the national file, they specify.
“If that is not enough, we are considering a new national strike for several days and the total cessation of Covid acts indefinitely. We would like not to get to that for access to care for our patients, (it is) now up to the government to take responsibility and not take the population hostage,” they say.
“It is a black January to avoid black years,” they plead.
Protest against the savings requested from laboratories
Biologists, who have increased their profits greatly from Covid tests, question the amount of savings they will be asked to make in return in the coming years.
If a compromise on the budget puncture for the year 2023 seems in sight, up to 250 million euros (divided between Covid tests and other tests) as the Government wants, the negotiation is blocked in the period 2024-2026.
Social Security, however, puts on the table an endowment of 150 million over three years, to reimburse “innovative acts” currently reserved for hospitals. But without specifying the amount of savings provided for in other acts, he referred to “the signing of a multi-year protocol before the end of the first semester.”
But biologists have already put their red line in terms of price reductions: no more than 145 million euros per year. Going further “would lead to the closure of at least 400 local laboratories (and) the elimination of at least 10,000 skilled jobs,” they say.
Liberal biologists already went on strike in November for the same reasons. 95% of the laboratories were mobilized on November 14.
Source: BFM TV
