2023-11-02 07:00:17
We, caregivers of all specialties and all origins, wish to firmly and unitedly oppose the plan to abolish state medical aid (AME) in favor of a degraded system.
AME is social assistance which allows foreign people in an irregular administrative situation to have access to care. This is a tool to combat exclusions which is only accessible to people whose resources are less than 810 euros per month and who demonstrate stable residence in France.
The patients we treat and who benefit from the AME are not, in the vast majority, people who have migrated to France to seek treatment, but people who have fled poverty, insecurity or who have made for family reasons. Their difficult living conditions in France expose them to significant risks: physical and psychological health problems, chronic illnesses, communicable or contagious diseases, insufficient prenatal care and increased risk of maternal death.
Diagnostic delays
As such, this is a priority population in terms of public health. Limiting their access to care would have the direct consequence of leading to a deterioration in their state of health, but also more generally that of the entire population. This is demonstrated by the unfortunate example of Spain: the restriction on access to care for foreigners in an irregular situation passed in 2012 led to an increase in the incidence of infectious diseases as well as excess mortality. This reform was finally repealed in 2018.
We, caregivers in the field, are extremely concerned at the idea of having to provide care in a health system deprived of the AME, because it would then be exposed to the risk of paralysis. Undocumented foreigners would have no other choice than to consult health care access centers (PASS) and reception and emergency services, which are already weakened and under pressure, and which would once again find themselves forced to assume the consequences of political decisions far removed from our realities.
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There are already multiple barriers to accessing care for these patients. Excluding them even further could only lead to their renunciation of care and the deterioration of their state of health. Distance from the health system ultimately leads to delays in diagnosis, imbalance and worsening of chronic diseases, as well as the occurrence of complications. The use of care in this context occurs urgently with complex and prolonged hospitalizations, sometimes in intensive care, in already weakened structures, and at ultimately much higher costs for the community, without forgetting the expected difficulties in transferring these patients to care. follow-up and rehabilitation, which require health coverage.
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