Among the elected officials from the right and the center who voted to eliminate this aid to undocumented people are around fifteen professional caregivers, doctors, pharmacists and nurses.
Two practitioners filed complaints before the Order of Physicians on Friday, November 10, for violation of the Public Health Code against two Les Républicains (LR) senators, also professional doctors, who voted to abolish medical aid for State (AME) during the debates on the immigration bill.
The AME fully covers the health costs of illegal foreigners present in France for at least three months. Senators voted to replace it with a more restricted system. The text must now be examined by the National Assembly.
Among the right and center senators who voted for the reform are around fifteen professional caregivers, doctors, pharmacists and nurses. The complaints before the Order of Physicians specifically target two of them, Marie Mercier and Jean-François Rapin. Their vote “[porte] directly affecting the physical and psychological health of a population known to be particularly vulnerable”write doctors Georges Yoram Federmann, psychiatrist based in Strasbourg, and Jean Doubovetzky, general practitioner practicing in Albi.
The suppression of the AME considered a “heresy”
According to the plaintiffs, the two targeted senators, by voting to end the AME, violated five articles of the Public Health Code, including article R.4127-7, according to which “the doctor must listen, examine, advise or treat with the same conscience all people whatever their origin, morals and family situation, their membership or non-membership of a specific ethnic group, nation or religion, their disability or their state of health, their reputation or the feelings he may have towards them. He must provide his assistance in all circumstances.
For the complainants, voting to abolish the AME is in “contradiction with the oath taken by doctors”. The Federation of Public Hospitals had already estimated on Wednesday that the abolition of the AME was “a heresy”.