Social Security Budget 2026: "Our hospitals lack administrative and logistical support to relieve healthcare workers"

In a tense economic climate, marked by a massive public deficit and a debt that is straining fiscal space, budgetary debates are expected to be particularly difficult. Faced with the challenge of balancing the national health insurance accounts and with the debate on the social security financing bill approaching in the National Assembly, the race to propose new revenue streams or cost-cutting measures has begun.

Between the issue of increasing so-called "behavioral" taxes on tobacco or fatty products, the issue of transferring costs from Health Insurance to mutuals or directly to patients, or the issue of reducing the price of medicines and certain medical procedures, consensus and balance will be difficult to find.

The goal is to ensure that healthcare—which remains the primary concern of the French—receives adequate resources, while also ensuring that this expenditure, inevitably increasing due to aging, the rise in chronic diseases, and the high, sometimes exorbitant, cost of innovative therapies, does not absorb, on its own, the resources that other areas also vitally need. Healthcare professionals, while needing the financial and human resources to provide good care, are the first to know that good health is impossible without decent housing, education, security, and a healthy environment.

In this context, it is essential to preserve our public hospitals. They have shown, before, during, and since the Covid-19 crisis, that they are pillars of our national cohesion. At the same time, the excesses of the financialization of entire sectors of private medicine, from large nursing home groups to multinational clinics, from medical imaging to laboratory testing, have been widely documented, notably by the national health insurance system, which can hardly be suspected of uninhibited left-wing bias. The fact that it is now widely accepted that healthcare workers and our public service deserve sustained support is, in itself, progress.

You have 70.81% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.