Transport of the sick: several hundred taxi drivers demonstrate around Lyon – 02/12/2024 at 10:35

Several hundred taxi drivers began slowing down or blocking several access points to the Lyon metropolitan area on Monday morning, to protest against the agreement currently being negotiated with Health Insurance for the transport of seated patients, according to the Rhône prefecture.

Drivers are protesting against new lower pricing for medical transport and an obligation to use “shared taxis” proposed by the National Health Insurance Fund (CNAM).

“Not only are we going to wait a very long time to fill the car, we are going to make endless rounds, but we are also going to deteriorate the service that we have put in place for years with patients,” explains to the 'AFP Abdel Green, president of the Federation of Independent Taxis of the Rhône (FTI69).

With around thirty taxi drivers, they set up at the entrance to the Edouard Herriot hospital in Lyon, to distribute leaflets entitled “Medical transport in danger”, without hindering access.

“The patient is not a guy you take to the airport or to a nightclub or to the hairdresser. He is someone who waits impatiently for you because you may be the only person who he sees during the week and it's an outing for him. He tells you about his little ailments, he talks to you about his little family, you take him to the hospital, sometimes you even help him get dressed. it's the release from hospitalization”, adds the responsible.

“That's what bothers us, much more than the fact that they want us to drive at 0.98 cents per kilometer instead of 1.67 euros. It's a loss of purchasing power. We're just comparing us to parcel carriers, except that we are transporting humans,” he pleads.

On a roundabout accessing the northern ring road of Lyon, around 150 taxis, hazard lights on, were parked in single files, without completely blocking traffic. Some displayed signs “taxis on strike” or “medical taxi in danger”, noted an AFP journalist.

For Nicolas Galliot, 43, taxi driver in Clermont-Ferrand and boss, medical transport represents 60 to 70% of his turnover.

If this agreement passes “it will be to the detriment of my employees, the value of our licenses, but above all patients”. Grouping patients in a shared taxi is “herding them like cattle,” he says. “We are going to lose the human side of our profession,” he worries.

According to an update at 8:15 a.m., the prefecture of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region noted a “very disturbed” situation on the motorway entrances to the Lyon metropolitan area, with four blocking points and a snail operation in Villefranche-sur-Saône, and slowdowns at the Saint-Quentin-Fallavier tollbooth.