In the midst of examining the immigration bill, Claude Evin and Patrick Stefanini submitted their report to the government on Monday, December 4, concerning state medical aid (AME), reserved for undocumented foreigners.

In this document commissioned by the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, the former socialist minister and the former campaign director of François Fillon and Valérie Pécresse notably underlined the “health usefulness” of the AME. For the rapporteurs, this medical coverage is “a system supervised 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.”

Established in 2000 by the left, the AME is granted to foreigners in an irregular situation present in France for at least three months and who receive less than 810 euros per month for a single person. This aid entitles you to 100% coverage of medical and hospital care within the limits of Social Security rates.

According to the rapporteurs, the increase in AME expenditure (which represented 968 million euros in 2022) is “largely correlated with that in the number of beneficiaries”, and the average individual quarterly consumption “remained stable despite the “increase in the cost of care”, going from “642 euros in 2009 to 604 euros in 2022”.

The “limits and risks” of the AMU desired by the right

MM. Evin and Stefanini also pointed out the “limits and risks” of replacing it with more restrictive “emergency medical aid” (AMU), as advocated by the right. During the examination of the immigration bill in the Senate, the Republican and centrist senators had abolished the AME on November 7 in favor of an AMU limited to the management of “serious illnesses and pain acute”, as well as care related to pregnancy monitoring, vaccinations and preventive medicine examinations.

Before the examination of the text in public session from December 11, the deputies of the presidential camp, supported by the left, reestablished the AME on November 29 in the law committee, by removing the senatorial system. The general rapporteur of the bill, Florent Boudié (Renaissance MP, Gironde), then underlined that it was a question relating to “individual health” but also a “question of collective health”. “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)”, recalled the government in a press release issued following the submission of the report.

In their report, MM. Evin and Stefanini nevertheless proposed strengthening controls and “eligibility criteria” for AME, particularly with regard to family situation. “Past progress” in terms of strengthening controls “should not exempt us from considering new measures for the future”, “especially as the subject remains very sensitive”, believe the two authors. In its press release, the government for its part emphasized that “the proposals formulated by the rapporteurs could be subject to regulatory or legislative developments in a specific text”.