Right to stay for care: its abolition by deputies would endanger lives
Our associations of sick people and users of the health system learned with amazement the registration for the agenda of the National Assembly, on February 6, of a bill tabled by the deputies of the republican right and aimed at repealing the system of the right to stay for care for sick foreigners.
Cbien that rejected in the law committee on January 29, this provision, if adopted, would condemn thousands of seriously sick people in France to death.
The right to stay for care, set up in the late 1990s, is a humanitarian system. He has never, contrary to agitated fantasies regularly, constituted an “air call” but constitutes the base of an effective public health policy, behind which is the survival of sick people who already reside in France and who are deprived of the “effective benefit of appropriate treatment” in their country of origin. This is the case of many people with a chronic pathology.
Already last year, the Darmanin law “to control immigration, to improve integration” had tried to plane this device, however among the most controlled, and whose appreciation is placed in the hands of the French office of immigration and integration (OFII).
In 2023, only 3,169 people benefited from a first “sick foreign” residence permit (with a decline of 25.5% compared to 2021). Less than 30,000 beneficiaries of a residence permit assigned for this reason live in France. Most for many years.
If the bill was adopted by the Parliament, persons could be expelled in their country of origin where they cannot be treated. Placed in an irregular situation, they will no longer benefit from universal illness protection but state medical aid, a device whose increasingly complex and late access leads to complications and hospital additional costs, in deep contradiction with the programs and public health objectives. A threat to the health of foreigners is, by extension, a threat to public health.
The parliamentarians signatory to this bill point to the cost of treatments, including that of dialysis which “Oscil between 80,000 and 100,000 euros per year And per person. This figure is exaggerated (the average cost of dialysis is around 63,000 euros per year for health insurance) and patients are not responsible for the price of treatments.
Even more serious, claiming that the right to stay of sick foreigners ” today is massively concerned with foreigners who came specifically in France to benefit from the management of chronic diseases linked to lifestyles (obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancers) “, Parliamentarians give in to a moral assessment between good and bad illnesses, good and bad patients, judged responsible for their health.
Our associations alert with seriousness on the consequences of such assertions and stigmatizations, again contrary to all the principles of public health.
More than 25 years after its implementation, our organizations call on parliamentarians to vote against the abolition of the right to stay for medical reasons, synonymous with death conviction of several thousand sick people living in our territory and serious threat to health of all.
Signatories: France Assos Health, Renalo, Aid, French Federation of Diabetics, Rare Diseases Alliance, SOS Hepatitis
