True or false. Can you have a gastric band fitted through State Medical Aid?

The possibility of having a gastric band fitted or having one’s ears glued back has become a major argument of the right and the far right to reform State Medical Aid. However, even if, under certain conditions, these operations are theoretically possible, there is no proof that the AME has actually been used for this.

Is State Medical Aid “open bar”as Laurent Jacobelli says? Guest of Franceinfo 8:30 a.m. Monday September 30, the spokesperson for the National Rally called for a reform of the AME which is attributed too largely to foreigners. Laurent Jacobelli said he agreed to finance the care of illegal migrants who have serious and contagious illnesses, but “you have to say stop” has “those who come to France illegally, who have a gastric band fitted and who leave”. Journalist Salhia Brakhlia replied that “that didn’t exist”but the RN deputy from Moselle assured that “of course it exists and it has been documented”. Really ?

It is false to say that this type of operation has been documented. No report on AME is specific to the point of talking about gastric banding. The latest report that was published on this subject, submitted to the Ministry of Health in December 2023, gives the number of stays in public health establishments in 2022, depending on the medical fields concerned (page. 57), but it does not never gives details of the acts that were carried out.

According to this report, more than a third of hospital stays paid by the AME are dialysis or chemotherapy sessions (38%), or 50,399 out of the total of 128,421 stays in the year. This is the first medical field to benefit from AME in hospitals. The second is obstetrics (15%) with more than 14,000 deliveries.

The third area is the digestive (7%). This field is divided into four specialties: major digestive surgery, hepato-biliary and pancreatic surgery, visceral surgery and hepato-gastroenterology. Digestive surgery represents 0.2% of hospital stays financed by the AME in 2022 (257 stays) and it is in this 0.2% that gastric banding may be included, but also other stomach operations, operations on the esophagus, small intestine, colon and rectum. The report does not provide further details.

We write “maybe”, because there is no proof that gastric banding was really financed by the AME, since the report is not as precise. All we know is that, in fact, it is possible to benefit from the AME to have a gastric band fitted provided you have been in France for at least nine months, as specified on the site of Health Insurance. This operation is one of the 16 treatments which are subject to this condition, with the reattachment of protruding ears which is also often brandished by the right and by the extreme right to call for a reform of the AME, without us knowing however, if the AME is really used for this.

In conclusion, it is in theory possible to benefit from the AME to have a gastric band fitted, but we do not know if this is really done, there is no public data to confirm this, nor, even less, to say that migrants come to France only for that and leave afterwards.