MPs adopt “aging well” bill

The text notably includes measures to combat the isolation of elderly people and a system for reporting cases of mistreatment.

The deputies largely adopted on Thursday evening at first reading a proposed law on old age, with limited ambition but which appears as a prelude to a broader text which could be adopted by the end of 2024.

The Renaissance bill “to build the society of aging well” was approved by 116 votes to 31. Only the PCF and LFI groups voted against, LR not participating in the vote. In her explanations of vote, LFI MP Martine Étienne denounced a law which amounts to a “succession of measures, false good ideas and announcement effects” masking “inaction [du gouvernement] on the question of autonomy.

Fight against isolation

For LR, Ian Boucart said he did not want to vote for or against a law “friendly” and with even a few “small advances”, but who “is content at this stage with good intentions”, far from the great text promised at the start of his first five-year term by Emmanuel Macron. He recalled that the examination of the law had been interrupted in April, only to resume seven months later, which “says a lot about the priority the majority gives to this issue.”

The text notably includes measures to combat the isolation of elderly people and a system for reporting cases of mistreatment. It also aims to “make daily work easier” home help, via a professional card.

It enshrines in law the right to visit nursing homes, as recommended in a report submitted to the government, after the trauma of many families during the Covid-19 crisis faced with the impossibility of going to see their loved ones. During the debates, the deputies notably approved a government amendment to “to obligate” private nursing homes to devote a fraction of their profits to improving the “well-being” of their residents, a measure echoing the Orpea scandal. They also approved, on a proposal from LR, the establishment of new indicators to evaluate nursing homes.