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Valls' announcements


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I missed the actual announcement and so I am going off Midi Libre:

http://www.midilibre.fr/2014/04/17/la-potion-amere-du-dr-valls-mecontente-tout-le-monde,849496.php

http://www.midilibre.fr/2014/04/16/salaires-des-fonctionnaires-le-point-d-indice-gele-jusqu-en-2017,849358.php

Other than freezing pay rises for civil servants (apart from seniority increments?), there doesn't seem to be any real substance to the announcements as reported above. The various points raised seem to attract the comment "OK, but HOW are you going to actually DO THAT?"

Did he actually provide any detail elsewhere?

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The announcements included a freeze on some benefits until Oct 2015 and removal of the increases in others, but what the "reorganisation" of the social security organisation is supposed to do seems vague. Similarly the very vague "reduce the operating expenses of the state" and "fewer "interventions" by state bodies" seem to me to be expressions of wishes rather than a solid programme to reduce the expenditure on what are basically fixed costs (barring wholesale redundancies).

The "better organisation of care provision" again is all well and good, but has proved difficult to achieve elsewhere and whether it can result in costs savings is a moot point when demand for healthcare can basically be thought of as infinite. Reducing the use of medicines may be laudable (particularly in France where at least from the outside, over-prescribing seems to be the norm), but this might start looking like rationing. Similarly the effort to reduce the number of unnecessary treatments can very easily start looking like rationing unless the rationale is very carefully explained and based on real data. Much of this though requires investment in the short-to-medium term to introduce and to make things stick, and without any indication of "HOW" this is to be done begs the question of whether it will actually ever be achieved.

Finally, the business of reducing the number of split or shared responsibilities for various activities between the different levels of bureaucracy seems like a nice idea, but I suspect will end up with unfunded responsibilities being created. I'm sure that there are probably too many layers of administrative authority in the French system, but they actually need to get on and DO things, not just talk about reforming them.

The revaluation is ongoing, I think - demands for information on rents on commercial properties were issued last year and the year before to my knowledge.

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