French legislative elections: What are the main alliances proposing on health?

Let's stay with our election coverage now and let's go to our science segment where we're taking a look at the health proposals of the three largest blocks that, of course, the far right, the National Rally, that leftist coalition we've been talking about the New Popular Front and the presidential camp as well. Our health and science editor, Julius Seeger, is also with me in the studio. Hello to you, Julia. Hey, Nadia, first of all, let's talk about the National Rally. That party wants to modify what's known as state medical aid and wants to reform public hospitals in practice. What are we talking about here? So the, the National Rally has really, you know, focus on tackling what they call the heavy bureaucracy in the health sector. And they want to reform the government's, the governance of the, the public hospitals. And to do so, they want to do it in a quite drastic manner because they want to cap administrative jobs to 10% and then really transfer part of those jobs to what they call operational services. Now there's a long standing reform which is to abolish altogether the Regional Health agencies. These were put together and put in place in 2019 and they they serve as a relay to the health ministry in the regions across France. And of course, their goal is to ensure health monitoring, but also promote health policies and also coordinate crisis. Now if we look at the latest information report from the National Assembly, it does seem like they have somewhat of a mixed result because the scope of their action is so huge that they tend to have issues indeed to be able to carry out all of their missions now. So what the National Rally says is that it wants to give a little bit more freedom to the department level now in line with the anti immigration and national preference, which is really the party's guiding line here. So it's really kind of France first, if you will. They really want to reform in a drastic manner state medical aid. What that is, is a system that allows undocumented migrants to benefit from 100% coverage for all medical and hospital care within the Social Security rates, of course, but they want the the the the national rally. They want to be able to reduce that to vital emergencies only. Now of course that could actually be counterintuitive because the more you wait and delay seeking treatment that the more you tend to get to that point of vital emergencies. And the other thing is that this, there could be a collective risk because this state government medical aid has also been used to really follow the collective health since COVID-19 to make sure that there there isn't any infectious disease emerging. For instance, now to counter the lack of doctors, because that's a huge issue here in France as well, we tend to have issues finding appointments with specialists, for instance. Well, they want to tackle that by eliminating income tax for retired doctors who wish to come back to work. Now they also want to tackle shortages and waste of, of medicine to do that. They they, they've spoken about a strategic autonomy plan, but they haven't haven't really given any details about how that would actually happen. But we know that they want to introduce the system that you have in the United States, which is kind of the fill in prescriptions as you go to be able to tackle waste specifically. OK, so that's the far right. Take us then to the left, the new Popular Front, they have been focusing on in their language rescuing public services. Tell us the focus is really on rescuing the public hospital. As you know, it's really hurting here in France. So it's a huge priority. If you look at the left block, most of the measures that you'll see we're taking actually from the NUPAS program, which are today the the majority within that coalition. But they were able, the coalition to find to agree on a major health law, if you will. And here they really want to focus on upgrading dramatically the wages and the status of health workers and professionals, implementing recruitment plans throughout the year to make sure that they find enough people. Now they want to also regulate opening private clinics in France. And then the way they want to do it is they want to condition it to permanent, what we call permanent care, which means that they have to commit to working hand in hand with public hospitals to make sure that there isn't that hospitals aren't overflowing. The Union of the Left also want to create what we call a public sector public centre for medicine. So here again, they've also identified this problem of shortages, but here they want to strengthen stock obligations. Now we know that here in France, the issue is not just stock obligations, but it's much more of a supply chain issue and the fact that you have a lot of producers, perhaps 90% of medicine producers who are in Asia, who sometimes refuse to sell to France first because they have other opportunities elsewhere where medicine is more expensive. Finally, the Union of the Left wants to focus on sports, reimbursing a sport on prescription. They also want to increase what we call a flat rate sports aid for younger people who are under the age of 30. Finally, then let's talk about the centrist alliance of Emmanuel Macron. They want to create a public mutual insurance that set at €1.00 a day. That's right here. We're in the continuation of Emmanuel Macron's program of of 2017 where he had made many promises specifically on on a public hospital. But perhaps what's new here is that he wants to create a, a new €1.00 a day government health insurance for retirees, for students, for job seekers and self-employed, for all of the people who don't have that extra Social Security. They want to increase also the cooperation between health professionals, more flexibility, which will allow for, for instance, pharmacist to be able to vaccinate or opticians to adapt eye prescriptions. So they really want to create more, more flexibility there. And they also have specific measures for Women's Health, including menopause and fertility consultation. And also, this is something that we also find in other programs, but endometriosis, to be able to really identify it as a chronic disease, which isn't the case today. Now, just to give a sum up, if you will, most of the three blocks have really identified the same issues, right? Access to care, medical deserts as we call them here in France. But I think what's really, you know, mind boggling is the fact that if you actually take the time to download those programs, it seems like they never explained. They never give numbers. They never explained how they want to finance all of these propositions. And you know, how much it would actually cost to taxpayers. Because it's really easy to say, you know, we're going to hire 10,000 more health employees and we all agree on that. But how are you going to do it? And I think it's also important to say for the two coalitions that were created, they were created hastily, so they didn't really have time to shake hands on everything. So the programs, the health programs that we have access to today, they're just a few bullet points on A1 page paper. So it's quite difficult for people now to be able to really choose for what they're voting for. Julia Sega, our health editor, thanks very much indeed.