3,000 caregivers, including a Nobel Prize winner in medicine, demand the continuation of State medical aid

The immigration bill continues to be discussed. This time, 3,000 caregivers are calling “the government and our elected officials to renounce any project that harms or restricts [le] perimeter” of State Medical Aid (AME), in a column published in The world Thursday November 2. Among the signatories of the text, we find Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, 2008 Nobel Prize in Medicine, and Jean-François Delfraissy, president of the National Consultative Ethics Committee.

The AME allows illegal foreigners present in France for at least three months to benefit from full coverage of their health costs. According to the latest national study conducted by the Institute for Research and Documentation in Health Economics, published at the end of 2019, one in two eligible people uses it. In the gallery, the caregivers point out that it is about“a tool to combat exclusions which is only accessible to people whose resources are less than 810 euros per month and who demonstrate stable residence in France”.

However, the immigration bill plans to replace the AME with more restrictive emergency medical aid. A few days before the arrival of the text of the law in the Senate, the signatories of the forum recall that in Spain, the implementation of a similar policy in 2012, before repeal in 2018, had resulted in “an increase in the incidence of infectious diseases as well as excess mortality”.