2023-11-28 14:30:05
A On the occasion of the examination of the bill on immigration, the Senate voted at first reading the transformation of State medical aid (AME) into emergency medical aid (AMU), an obligation which, remaining, appears in the various texts of international law, in the chapter of the right to health. This shock measure is presented as a marker of great firmness, which would reduce the attractiveness of our country in terms of illegal immigration and the related costs. A survey of the CSA Institute for Cnews, carried out in September and October 2023, would show that the French would be mostly in favor. It would still be necessary to sincerely explain the implications of such a choice.
Everything has already been written by healthcare groups on the risks that such restrictions on access to care pose to public health, particularly to prevent the spread of infectious diseases, and to what extent this obsession with eliminating AME is surprising coming from elected officials regularly proclaiming their attachment to prevention and the public hospital. But it is important to explain why our health system, already under strain, will be the first to suffer and, above all, why this is a simple displacement of the problem, or even its disappearance.
The AME allows people in an irregular situation with low resources, below a certain ceiling, and present in the territory for more than three months – this criterion was added in 2019 to reduce the risk of medical tourism – to benefit from social security coverage to be able to receive treatment in town or in hospital. Comfort, aesthetic or infertility treatments are already excluded.
This system would, according to some, be an incentive to come to France. Perhaps… even if there are no studies today allowing us to know the role of such an advantage in the departure of people from their countries of origin, its place in relation to other allowances or, quite simply, faced with the desire to come and live in a peaceful country or to transit through it. But admitting that it is an incentive for some, that does not change the foreseeable consequences of its removal.
Repress without treating
Let us not place ourselves on the moral side, or even on the public health side. Let us simply draw the thread of this proposition which immediately clashes with reality. Thus, with the new AMU system, a measure which, according to Republican senators, will combine firmness and humanity, no chronic illness will be able to benefit from treatment so as not to create an incentive to travel. As a result, these illegal migrants will not be able to be treated by a town doctor due to lack of means to pay for a consultation or treatment at the pharmacy. All sick people, whether their pathology is urgent or not, or even known and long-standing, will a priori present themselves at the hospital and will be received by the emergency or consultation services.
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