Is forgoing healthcare a fatality ?

In 2023, one in four people living in France gave up healthcare for financial reasons: this alarming result is the main finding of an Ifop survey for Crédit Mutuel. While the rising cost of access to healthcare is cited as the main reason, another expected reason emerges from the survey: 43 % of people affected by renouncement to healthcare live in rural areas. In France, 20 million people live in a medical desert. The supply of doctors issue has been identified, and abolishing the numerus clausus was the first response, while increasing the cost of consultations was the second. Now that healthcare costs are well covered and that use of teleconsultation is on the rise, we’ll have to wait for new generations of doctors to be trained and geographically deployed before we can prove that refusing care is by no means inevitable. So how can we ensure that healthcare services are accessible throughout the country? To what extent is making patients responsible for “consuming” healthcare the right thing to do?