“We have the impression that we are going to let people die in the street, absolutely not!”, defends senator LR Agnès Evren

“We have the impression that we are going to let people die in the street, absolutely not!” Agnès Evren, senator and president of the Fédération Les Républicains de Paris, defends herself, Friday September 27 on franceinfo. She reacts to the declarations of the new Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, who wishes to review the criteria for obtaining state medical aid for people in an irregular situation in France.

“The objective is certainly not to eliminate the AME, but to make it an emergency system. There is no question of abandoning people in vulnerable situations for ethical reasons, of humanism and quite simply of public health”she explains.

Eight former health ministers signed a column Thursday in the newspaper The World to alert on the “unacceptable health, human, social and economic consequences” what the removal of the AME would have. Agnès Evren just wishes “open the debate”. She believes that we have “in France the most favorable system, which even goes beyond our obligations”. According to the senator, the government’s intention is just to look with “all the measures in view of the budgetary situation and asking ourselves the question of whether we can do better and fairer”.

Agnès Evren would like to depoliticize the debate around the AME and for us to be “a little less dogmatic” and remembers being personally “against its deletion”For “simply reasons of public health and ethics”.

To have access to the AME, any foreigner in an irregular situation must live in France continuously for more than three months and receive less than 10,000 euros of income per year. But “we will never leave a person who breaks their leg” or a woman “pregnant who is in the process of giving birth”she reassures. The government’s idea is to redefine the “care basket”she specifies.

“As in all countries of the European Union, we are opening the debate. There is nothing definitive”assures Agnès Evren. The senator refers to Michel Barnier’s general policy speech scheduled for Tuesday. “We will see what will be decided”she said.