Healthcare has been a quite neglected issue in the French political debate, as the government responded to other more pressing citizens’ demands for public housing, urban planning, and employment. The article discusses changes in the French healthcare sector that questioned France’s ability to handle public health emergencies. Reforms shook the entire health system and affected its governance and accounting. The financialization of the health system, the verticalization, and the re-concentration of policy decisions led the government to play the role of an incentivizer and the patient that of overseers of reforms. However, outcomes were below expectations on many dimensions. Reforms could not address key health emergencies, including the rise of the medically underserved areas, the shortage of hospital beds, and the already long patients’ waiting lists.
Published Date: 2022-07-28; Received Date: 2022-07-01
