This weekend, in “Le Parisien-Aujourd’hui en France”, Gérald Darmanin spoke out “personally” in favor of the abolition of State Medical Aid to transform it into Emergency Medical Aid . A proposal that is not at all to the taste of the Ministry of Health is the information in the brief.
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The Minister of Health, Aurélien Rousseau, believes that the abolition of State Medical Aid (AME), mentioned by Gérald Darmanin, would amount to “lose-lose”, according to information from franceinfo, Tuesday October 10. Minister Aurélien Rousseau’s entourage argues that state medical aid protects illegal foreigners, but also the public health of the entire French population. Protection against epidemics, for example, which could spread if patients do not seek treatment for fear of having to pay the doctor.
Other arguments put forward in those around Aurélien Rousseau: we must not weaken the access of vulnerable people to the most essential rights, and we must treat early enough instead of intervening when it is too late.
Risk of even greater overcrowding of emergency rooms
Beyond the health aspects linked to late treatment, the risk would be that without guaranteed AME, foreigners desert medical practices and fall back on emergencies because the hospital treats everyone. Emergencies which are already very congested. “It would be more expensive”, according to an executive advisor. An LR report last spring estimated the cost of State Medical Aid at more than 1.2 billion euros in 2022.
If Gérald Darmanin said he was open, Saturday October 7 in the columns du Parisien-Today in France to a restriction of the AME, it is because it is a request from the right. The right has already voted in the Senate Law Committee last March to replace State Medical Aid with Emergency Medical Aid in the immigration bill. Discussions at the Luxembourg Palace restart on November 6.
>> CHRONICLE. Should state medical aid be abolished?
By reaching out to LR, Gérald Darmanin is not unanimous in his camp, beyond the Ministry of Health. “I didn’t know we had become a demagogue party”blurted out a minister who accused his colleague of “make excuses” if he ever fails to pass his law. “He will be able to say ‘I wanted to find an agreement with the right, it was Borne who stopped me'”, affirms this minister. The Prime Minister postponed the subject until later during her interview on Sunday on BFM TV, with a mission to evaluate the AME entrusted to senior official LR Patrick Stéfanini and former socialist minister Claude Évin to see if any adaptations are necessary.