the government wants to reduce the reimbursement of medicines and medical consultations by 5%

The Minister of Health spoke on Monday at the opening of debates in the Senate on the bill.

After the Assembly, the Senate in turn examines the Social Security budget. At the opening of the debates, Monday November 18, the Minister of Health spoke out in favor of a 5% reduction in the reimbursement rate for medicines from next year. “The copayment on medicines”that is to say the remainder payable by patients after reimbursement by Health Insurance, “will increase by 5%”declared Geneviève Darrieussecq. The co-payment is most often covered by complementary health insurance.

The minister also mentioned an increase of 5% in the remainder of the charge for medical consultations then “that it was potentially possible to increase it by 10%”. The government's initial project consisted of reducing the cost of medical consultations from 70% to 60%, which will therefore be reimbursed at 65% in the future. For medicines, the three existing reimbursement rates (65%, 30% and 15%) would a priori be lowered in the same proportion.

These dereimbursements, which do not appear in the text but will be recorded by ministerial decree, will result in a “transfer to complementary health insurance” whose amount “was reduced from 1.1 billion to 900 million euros” she clarified. In October, the former Minister of Health Frédéric Valletoux warned of such a measure and its potential impact on the cost of mutual or supplementary health insurance.