This reform “would ultimately cost more and would be a shock for the public hospital”, according to Nicolas Revel, guest Thursday November 9 on France Inter.
Nicolas Revel, general director of the AP-HP, spoke on Thursday November 9 on France Inter sa “very serious concern” while senators voted to abolish state medical aid (AME), a system which covers the medical costs of people in an irregular situation on French soil, as part of the immigration bill.
“If this reform went through to the end, it would have a deleterious effect on our health system. It would ultimately cost more and it would be a shock for the public hospital”, did he declare. It is “the reaction of the director of the AP-HP that I am, but also of the overwhelming majority of the medical and healthcare community”he stressed.
The text voted by the senators provides that only people suffering from serious pathologies or those experiencing acute pain would be treated.
Waiting until someone is very ill before being able to treat them and take care of them is doing the complete opposite of what we want to do, which is to try to diagnose people as quickly as possible.
Nicolas Revel, general director of AP-HPon France Inter
The objective is to “treat them and care for them as soon as possible to prevent, either when they are infectious and contaminating, that they spread the disease around them, or when they have serious illnesses which are not communicable such as cancer or diabetes, they get worse”, he explained. According to him, the risk is “that they become much more burdensome patients to take care of, with longer and much more expensive hospitalizations”, he clarified. If this reform is adopted, “There is, in my opinion, a risk of worsening expenses. We will not have them right away, but in the first years”he warned.
The director of the AP-HP does not clearly see the benefits of the reform
Nicolas Revel does not see the AP-HP caregivers “dismiss a patient on the grounds that their pain is not sufficiently acute or that their pathology is not yet serious enough”. 420,000 people are beneficiaries of the AME in France, not counting those who would be entitled to the system without asking for it. The director of the AP-HP does not see the benefits of this reform very clearly: “Those who could choose France on the grounds that the AME exists are still people who are already sick rather than young and healthy people. When you are already sick because you have cancer or diabetes, we say to ourselves: I will rather go to France rather than elsewhere, because there is a system. The paradox is that when you look at the text voted by the Senate, these people will be taken care of“, he explained.