The French government plans to lower health insurance reimbursement

Bad news for French mutual insurance companies. The government has warned mutual insurance companies and other complementary health insurance companies that it wants to reduce Health Insurance reimbursement for medical procedures this summer, a federation of complementary health insurance companies, which sharply criticizes the project, revealed on Friday. “The government has just separately warned the complementary health insurance federations of its plan to significantly increase co-payments on medical procedures, by regulation in the summer,” announced in a press release the Federation of Joint Social Protection Institutions (FIPS), which represents joint complementary health insurance (managed by employers and unions).

“This massive transfer of charges between Social Security and supplementary schemes could be supplemented by other measures under study, in particular taxation, as part of the next social security financing bill,” added FIPS. The co-payment is the part of the price of care not reimbursed by Health Insurance. It is covered more or less largely by complementary health insurance, the rest being the responsibility of the patient.

Load transfers

“Whatever the details to come, FIPS wishes to solemnly alert, on behalf of the social partners, the government to the disastrous consequences of such measures,” she warned. “They will significantly reduce the purchasing power of employees and seniors, and increase the costs of businesses,” added FIPS. “Once again, the measures envisaged by the government are mainly based on burden transfers, without being accompanied at this stage by an overall reflection on the control of expenditure,” she declared.