The Social Security financing bill is examined from October 24 in the National Assembly. The government should also present a bill on end of life before the end of the year. Matthias Savignac, president of the MGEN group, details his position.
Matthias Savignac has been president of the MGEN group since July 8, 2021. The group has 4.2 million insured people, active, retired from national education and higher education, research and innovation, culture, sports and ecological transition. It supports 5,800 companies with 3.2 million members including 300,000 expatriates in more than 170 countries around the world.
The government had initially planned to include in the Social Security financing bill the doubling of medical deductibles on boxes of medicines and consultations, before abandoning it.
franceinfo: Is this good news for the mutual insurance companies that you manage?
Matthias Savignac: This is good news for citizens and those with social insurance, because for mutual insurance, it changes absolutely nothing. As soon as we are in the case of medical deductibles or flat-rate contributions, we are sure of the remaining costs for the citizen, and this remaining cost cannot be covered and reimbursed by complementary health insurance.
On the other hand, the executive has not given up on reimbursing less for dental care: 60% instead of 70 previously. Half a billion euros now rests on your shoulders. Are you necessarily going to have to pass on this financial burden to the prices?
A mutual fund, as its name indicates, cannot capitalize elsewhere and its only resource is the contributions of its members. So, as soon as there is a transfer of costs from compulsory health insurance to supplementary health insurance, mutual health insurance in this case, we will have to think and see how we impact the contributions of our members this additional support, because, unlike Social Security, we do not have the capacity to generate a deficit.
Are you necessarily going to have to increase prices next year?
This is part of the thoughts that the board of directors of the MGEN group is having at the moment, like all complementary health insurance companies.
There are actually figures circulating. Some fear price increases of up to 10%. Will it be of this order?
We will not be in those dimensions. We are in the process of refining our results. And it is true that we must also wait for the end of the work on the PLFSS (Social Security financing bill) to know exactly the nature and amounts of transfers of charges from Health Insurance to mutual insurance companies. .
Today, you do not have full visibility on the amounts that will be transferred from Social Security to mutual insurance companies?
For example, if the PLFSS 2024 is adopted by 49-3, we may have amendments that were not expected. I don’t have anything specific in mind, but you have to say that as long as things are not decided, we can always have additional support. We will therefore have to see how we will take care of them.
Next year, the MGEN group, along with 17 other civil society organizations, unions and NGOs, will form a “progressive pact” to take a position in the end-of-life debate. The government should present a bill by the end of 2023. We will see what direction is taken. Assisted suicide or euthanasia? Where does your preference lie?
With the ADMD, the Association for the Right to Die with Dignity, we ultimately worked on a common plea which aims both to ask that assisted suicide be part of the responses to aid in dying for sides of euthanasia, but not the choice between one or the other solution. All the studies showed that the evaluation of the 2005 Claeys-Leonetti law did not make it possible to respond to all situations.
Why do we have to have both?
If we take the situation of assisted suicide, this means that we ourselves are forced to inject the product that will end our lives.
“In the case of people who do not have the physical or moral capacity to choose for themselves and by themselves, we cannot allow suffering to continue.”
Matthias Savignacat franceinfo
Do you think the French are ready?
The French are ready. For two years, the MGEN group has engaged in collective reflection with its activist fabric, its employee fabric and its members. We see that more than 92% of the French population is in favor of changing the law, because the current law does not make it possible to respond to all situations. We should not imagine that a new law will respond to all situations, but if it prevents additional suffering for people who do not wish to experience it, I find that it is an important social step forward.
What will be your role in this new French model?
Obviously, we speak our word, but words are accompanied by actions. For the record, the MGEN group has been involved in these subjects for a very long time. In 1994, we opened our first palliative care unit which provides care and pain relief for people at the end of life. We will continue and campaign today alongside the ADMD for the generalization of palliative care and general access for the entire population to this very important solution. We also plead for equal rights for all citizens in the face of death. We are also campaigning for a generalization of active assistance in dying, assisted suicide and euthanasia. And we will see how, when the law is passed, complementary health insurance will be able to support each and everyone in their journey. Today, as long as we do not have the outlines of the law, the modalities, the principles, it is difficult to plan for the support modalities. We are very interested today, and it is legitimate and it is normal, in the suffering of people who are in these end-of-life situations. But I think that we will also have to focus on the people who remain, that is to say the support of families who have lost a loved one, the support for bereavement because these are very specific situations.
What you are saying today is that society is ready to have this debate in a calm manner, in order to have a French model which is neither the Swiss model nor the Belgian model, but a sort of both. same time ?
I think so. Moreover, the citizens’ convention, these 185 citizens who were not experts on the subject, carried out a formidable exercise in democracy. Over the course of several weeks and through supported and collective work, they made it possible to bring out a solution which takes up the points that I mentioned: equal access for all to solutions, the development of palliative care and access to active assistance in dying, with both assisted suicide and euthanasia. We see that it is also important that there is a reappropriation of these subjects by citizens and we must say to ourselves that we cannot leave these subjects which relate to both ethics and humanism, support only for doctors and specialists only. We are, you and I, specialists in our existence and we must be able to have a voice. This is the reason why we organized ourselves, since those who are against are today organized to finally speak with one voice for our positions. And we decided to organize our voice within this progressive pact.