Latest News France: health-care

The recent confusion concerning health insurance for British
retirees (and other inactifs such as students and jobseekers) living in France has been clarified by an
announcement on the French government’s social security website www.securite-sociale.fr.

The bulletin has been welcomed because, as Living France predicted in issue 190, the French government
has relaxed last autumn’s rulings for certain categories of EU expats living in France.

According to the new rules:

• Those people who were covered via the Couverture Médicale Universelle (CMU) before 23 November 2007 will remain so, paying the same premiums as before.
In the case of those on low incomes who were insured free of charge, they will also remain covered.

• Those people covered by an E106 before 23 November 2007 will be eligible for health insurance via the CMU when their current insurance (ie via their E106) runs out.
These concessions are good news for people with pre-existing medical conditions already living in France because they would have found it difficult, if not impossible, to find
private health insurance.

The concessions do not however apply to people who moved to France after 23 November 2007. Nor
do they apply to those currently planning to move there. These people will be required to buy private health insurance for the first five years of their residence in France. For those with an E106 – which lasts two
years – they will be required to buy private health insurance for three years after the cover runs out.

There are however a series of safety nets in place. For example, if an EU citizen moved to France with
an E106 and was subsequently diagnosed with a serious disease, they would be categorised as having
suffered an accident de vie (ie an unforeseen event with negative financial or health implications such
as the death of a spouse, divorce, disablement, serious disease etc) and, at the expiration of their E106,
would be eligible for health insurance via the CMU.

The same would be true of a person who moved to France with private health insurance and subsequently suffered an unforeseen event which meant they could no longer afford their health insurance or that their private health insurance
company refused to cover them.

As regards people in a situation irrégulière – that is to say someone living in France without health insurance – if they have been in the country less than three months and
need urgent emergency health care, their costs will be met under the European Health Insurance Card scheme (which replaces the old E111).

This applies even in retrospect, and therefore EU citizens not in possession of an EHIC – which only proves your right to emergency cover and does not actually confer it – can
still get emergency treatment costs covered. The card may not cover 100 per cent of medical costs however.

For more information about the scheme see http://ec.europa.eu/employment_social/healthcard/index
_en.htm (in English).

For people who have been living in France for more than three months and have no health-care insurance, if they also have a very low income, they may be eligible for health
insurance under the AME (Aide Médicale d’État) scheme.

For more details see www.ameli.fr (in French). All of which is good news for many people but the changes have
hit others very hard. Living France reader Roger Smith, aged 54, and his wife were planning to move to France last autumn. Sadly, at the last minute they had to cancel all their plans because they were refused private health insurance due to Roger’s recent heart bypass surgery.
‘I don’t think our France plans are completely dead in the water,’ says Roger, ‘but life has to move on and we may take another direction...’

For personalised information about individual cases, two English speaking helplines have been set up:
CNAMTS: 00 33 (0)8 20 90 42 12
CLEISS: 00 33 (0)1 45 26 33 41

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