French surgeons last week carried out a threat made last summer to visit England to protest about low pay and high insurance premiums after saying that the government failed to honour an agreement made last August. Although nearly 2000 surgeons had been expected to take part in the protest trip (originally planned for September), in the end only 350 did. Led by a group called Surgeons of France, the surgeons spent four days at Pontin's holiday camp in Camber Sands, Sussex, where they planned a new union, the Union of French Surgeons, which they officially founded in Paris on 14 May, the day after their return. The deal struck with the French government in August 2004 was that tariffs (reimbursement payments) would be raised by between 12.5% and 25%, depending on which sector (private or public) the surgeons belonged to and that public sector surgeons would be allowed to charge private sector fees occasionally. Michel Chassang, head of the country's biggest medical union, the Confederation of French Medical Unions, which also signed the agreement in August, criticised the protest, saying that the poor turnout did more damage than good to the surgeons' cause. He told the La Croix newspaper on 12 May (p 19, www.la-croix.com ) that the agreement was being honoured but was simply taking more time than expected.
A spokesman for the Surgeons of France said that, although only 350 surgeons visited England, a further 3000 went on strike in France in support of the protest. Jean-François Copé, the government spokesman, assured the surgeons on 12 May that agreement would be honoured. But he expressed surprise at the choice of England for the protest. England was chosen because the surgeons said that its healthcare system was more flexible than the France's and also because of the demand in Britain for French surgeons and because British patients are seeking surgery in France. “I didn't know that the healthcare model in Great Britain was so much better than France's,” Mr Copé said on French radio (France-Inter, 9 May). “I think it's rather the opposite.” The surgeons say that with the exception of a small increase 15 years ago, the tariffs used by the healthcare system to reimburse surgeons for their work has not changed in 20 years and the cost of the surgeons' insurance premiums accounts for a quarter of their income. The surgeons are also concerned that these problems and better financial prospects in countries such as England are depleting their numbers, which the health ministry estimates will have fallen by about a fifth by 2010, from 23 000 to 17 000.