2024-10-27 04:30:00
“We want to make patients pay for the social security deficit, this calls into question the principle of national solidarity”worries Féreuze Aziza, head of the France Assos Santé project, which brings together dozens of user associations. The increase foreseen by the government, for medical visits, in the copay, i.e. the amount to be paid after the Social Security reimbursement, and covered by complementary health insurance, has put patient associations on alert. Today this “ticket” represents 30% (and could rise to 40% tomorrow): concretely, on a price of 26.50 euros for a basic visit to the GP, 70% is covered by Social Security, or 18 .55 euros (of which 2 euros remain the responsibility of the patient as a “lump sum contribution”) and the cost contribution represents 7.95 euros.
After the doubling, in 2024, of medical deductibles, sums that are borne by patients when they purchase boxes of medicines or consult a healthcare professional, this new savings path approved by the executive, for 2025, will have “fatally” due to the increase in contributions from supplementary workers, observes the expert. And consequently to “further increase in the risk of giving up treatment”especially among people who do not benefit from collective agreements (those negotiated by companies), i.e. the unemployed, farmers, self-employed workers, temporary workers and pensioners. “It is for this last category that we can fear the worst”he insists again, recalling that it is they who, due to their age, and since they stipulate individual contracts, have to pay the highest contributions.
Faced with fears, and even before the issue reached the Chamber, with the start of the examination of the bill on the financing of social security in the National Assembly on Monday 28 October, the government attempted to free up the land: the measure to increase user fees We must spare the most fragile and the sickest, primarily patients suffering from chronic diseases (ALD), we insist to the Ministry of Health. But the argument is not convincing.
The phenomenon is known and documented: these chronically ill patients are perhaps the most covered by Social Security – 100% for treatment relating to their ALD pathology – but they are also those whose out-of-pocket expenses are highest. A fact that may seem counterintuitive but which some numbers summarize well: if the sums not reimbursed (neither by the health fund nor by complementary insurance) represent on average 250 euros per person per year, they are more than three times higher for chronically ill patients , or 840 euros, according to a June 2024 report by the inspectors general of social affairs and finance.
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