State Medical Aid (AME) for undocumented foreigners, recently called into question by the Senate in the immigration bill, is “generally under control”, but “deserves to be adapted”, according to the report submitted on Monday to the government by Claude Evin and Patrick Stefanini.
The report, which underlines the health usefulness of the AME, points out the limits and risks of its replacement by more restrictive emergency medical aid as advocated by the right.
However, it proposes a strengthening of controls and eligibility criteria, particularly with regard to family situation.
The government stressed in the crowd of publication of the document that the proposals formulated by the rapporteurs could be the subject of a regulatory or legislative evolution in a specific text.
For the record, no proposal relating to the AME can be integrated into the immigration bill currently under examination, these provisions being unrelated to the subject of the text (legislative rider), the government also recalled in its press release.
For the rapporteurs, the AME is a system regulated on a regulatory level, implemented and controlled in a professional manner by the Health Insurance services and which does not generate consumption of care revealing atypicalities, abuse or structural fraud .
However, past progress in strengthening controls should not exempt us from considering new measures for the future, especially as the subject remains very sensitive, add the two authors.
The report notes that the increase in AME expenditure (which represented 968 million euros in 2022) is largely correlated with that in the number of beneficiaries, and that average quarterly consumption remained stable despite the increase in the cost of care, going from 642 euros in 2009 to 604 euros in 2022.