The main players in the health sector are calling for a multi-year programming law "to guarantee the sustainability" of the system, in an open letter to Minister Genevieve Darrieusecq published in La Tribune on Sunday.
"We, stakeholders in the health system (...) today note that, in the absence of a multi-year vision of the resources" to be devoted to this sector, public health policies "remain without direction or compass, prisoners of a short-sighted accounting logic", write the signatories.
Among them are the president of the French Red Cross, the president of the French Hospital Federation (FHF), the French Mutualité, and the Federation of Private Hospitals (FHP).
While the next Social Security budget (PLFSS) is due to be presented in October, they are calling for the signing "as soon as possible" of a multi-annual protocol, "over five years".
They argue that "health can no longer be reduced to a simple budget line, because it is above all a strategic human investment" and believe that "multi-year funding is vital to guarantee the sustainability of our system."
In the same newspaper, the general director of the Assistance publique-Hopitaux de Paris (AP-HP) Nicolas Revel warns of "the return to the policy of cutting back".
"A return to such logic would force us to cut staff numbers again and tighten working conditions at the very moment when, on the contrary, we are desperately seeking to recreate attractiveness and reopen beds. We would very quickly go backwards," he warns.
The public hospital, still "convalescing" after the Covid crisis, "remains the last bastion of access to care," he continues. "Of course, it must become more efficient, but not by weakening it at the moment when it is beginning to recover."
English 
French