Parliamentarian specializing in sports, and elected representative from Moselle, Belkir Belhaddad is tired of waiting for the decree implementing a measure that he helped to have voted for in 2020 in the 2021 social security budget. “I have everything the ecosystem with me,” explained the co-chair of the Olympic monitoring group to the Assembly on Thursday. “This was voted unanimously and it is not even part of the daily life of the French!”, he laments, two days before putting on his sneakers for a five-day journey on foot and bike.
Despite his questions and reminders, he is still waiting for this decree, which would allow type 2 diabetics to benefit, on an experimental basis, from a physical activity assessment and consultations, and to be referred to sports and health centers.
Scientific studies have already been proving for years the benefits of physical activity alongside treatments, as well as for cancers or mild depression. So-called “adapted physical activity” (APA) sessions have been permitted since a 2016 law and are partly covered by certain mutual insurance companies. The question of their reimbursement by Social Security comes up regularly during budgetary debates.
According to calculations at the time, the cost of the measure was estimated at 40 million euros. Why is the decree not arriving? “It’s a non-drug treatment,” he explains, pointing among other things to “economic interests” who are in no hurry to see this device arrive, according to him.
In the meantime, this “marathoner” who “has done the Sables marathon six times”, he says, will leave the Metz CHR on Saturday for five stages, “between 45 and 84 km per day”, and will finish on November 6 in front of the Ministry of Health in Paris. “330 km to make sport a public health issue,” writes the press kit of his journey. “A physical test,” he sums up.
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