2023-11-07 23:28:09
The Senate adopted this Tuesday, November 7, the abolition of state medical aid (AME), reserved for undocumented immigrants, transformed into “emergency medical aid” during the examination of the bill immigration. This deletion may, however, still be objected to during the examination of the text in the National Assembly.
The reform was introduced by the senatorial right, but the government did not oppose it. The Minister for Health Professions, Agnès Firmin Le Bodo, justified the government’s abstention by the fact that this reform “has nothing to do” in the immigration bill. “Mixing the debates on the AME and immigration control is nonsense,” declared Agnès Firmin Le Bodo in the Senate, assuring that “the government is very attached to the AME”, a “device of public health”.
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Despite everything, the government relied on the “wisdom” of senators on this reform proposal. Demanded for a long time by the right, it was voted for by 200 votes in favor and 136 against.
The adoption of the article abolishing the AME caused a strong reaction from left-wing parliamentarians. The doctor and environmentalist senator Bernard Jomier (related to the PS) deplored on(formerly Twitter) “a health, moral and economic fault”. Socialist senator Corinne Narassiguin associated the government’s wise advice with “complicit silence”.
Originally, the government had not planned to question the AME as part of the discussions surrounding the immigration bill, but the Les Républicains (LR) party, which considers the health system too generous with the undocumented, took advantage of its position of strength in the Senate to add an article in committee which transforms the AME into emergency medical aid (AMU), with a much more restricted scope and conditions of access.
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Currently, the system established by the left in 2000 gives the right to medical and hospital care – within the limits of Social Security rates – to foreigners in an irregular situation who have been in France for at least three months.
On October 7, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, said he was in favor “on a personal basis”, in The Parisian, to the measure demanded by LR and their centrist ally in the Senate to “remove the AME and transform it into AMU”. “It’s a good compromise which combines firmness and humanity”, assessed the former Sarkozyist, who has defended this position for around ten years.
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