There are tenacious symbols. In the chapter on immigration, State medical aid (AME) is one of them. This system divides the political arena and could quickly reveal the divisions within the new government.
Recently appointed Minister of the Interior, a heavyweight in the executive and a conservative figure of the Republicans (LR), Bruno Retailleau declared on TF1 on Monday, September 23, that he wanted to tackle this basket of care for undocumented foreigners earning less than 10,000 euros per year, and which benefited, at the end of 2023, around 450,000 people. “I don’t want to (…) that France is the most attractive country in Europe for a certain number of social benefits and access to healthcare”he said. The new tenant of Place Beauvau can a priori benefit on this subject from the goodwill of the Prime Minister, Michel Barnier, who defended in 2021, during his campaign for the LR primary, the suppression of the AME.
“A public health device”
Members of the government could, however, grind their teeth. The Minister for Ecological Transition, Energy, Climate and Risk Prevention, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, rather reluctant to see Macronism shift to the right, reacted the very next day on France-Bleu Nord: “We have been clear. A suppression would not be acceptable because state medical aid, beyond [du fait qu’elle vient] in aid of foreigners in the territory, is a public health system”she opposed, echoing the discussions that crossed the macronie at the time of the debates on the “immigration” bill brought by Gérald Darmanin, in the fall of 2023.
The Minister of Health, Geneviève Darrieussecq, has remained silent on the subject but, in November 2023, she and twenty-five other Modem deputies signed a text published by the newspaper The Cross and titled “State medical aid, yes to the French health exception!” This platform opposed the abolition of AME. At the time, the senatorial right – in the majority, Bruno Retailleau being president of the LR senators group – had managed to introduce the abolition of this health measure, before the article was finally withdrawn from the law. The government had nevertheless promised to look into a reform and, to do this, an evaluation mission had been entrusted to the former socialist minister of health, Claude Evin, and to the former prefect and right-winger Patrick Stefanini.
Read the decryption: Article reserved for our subscribers Report supports state medical aid, while recommending its tightening
Add to your selections
Its findings, published on December 4, 2023, confirmed “health utility” of the AME and warned against the “significant risk of abandoning care” that its replacement by emergency medical aid would involve, Who “would have the triple impact of a deterioration in the health of the people concerned, possible consequences for public health and increased pressure on health establishments”.
You have 38.12% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
